iJ=.  ^i^-  -JFT'st  ^=^ 


:;^crt-  «■=< '; 


^.3.  //, 


vet* 


A* 


PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


% 


BR  123  .W545  1881 
Williams,  John,  1817-1899 
The  world's  witness  to  Jesus 
Christ 


THE    BEDELL    LECTURES. 


i*     FEB    3  19 


THE  BEDELL   LECTURE  FOR   1881 


^^/CiL  SEtt 


The  WORLD'S  Witness 


TO 


JESUS  CHRIST 


The  Power  of  Christianity  in  developing 
Modern  Civilization 


BY 


THE  RT.  REV.  JOHN  WILLIAMS,  D.D 

Bishop  0/  Connecticut 


NEW   YORK 

G.    P.    PUTNAM'S    SONS 

27  AND  29  West  23D  Street 

18S2. 


Copyright  by 
G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

1882 


Press  of 

G.  P.  Putnanis  Sons 

New  York 


EXTRACTS 

From  the  communication  of  the  donors  to  the 
Board  of  Trustees  of  the  Theological  Semi- 
nary of  the  Diocese  of  Ohio  and  Kenyon  Col- 
lege. 

Cleveland,  June  21,  1880. 
Gentlemen: 

We  have  consecrated  and  set  apart  for  the  service 
of  God  the  sum  of  ^5,000,  to  be  devoted  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  lecture  or  lectures  in  the  Institutions 
at  Gambier  on  the  Evidences  of  Natural  and  Re- 
vealed Religion;  or  the  Relations  of  Science  and 
Religion. 

We  ask  permission  of  the  Trustees  to  establish  the 
lecture  immediately,  with  the  following  provisions: 

The  lecture  or  lectures  shall  be  delivered  bien- 
nially on  Founders'  Day  (if  such  a  day  shall  be 
established),  or  other  appropriate  time.  During  our 
lifetime,  or  the  lifetime  of  either  of  us,  the  nomination 
of  the  lectureship  shall  rest  with  us. 

The  interest  for  two  years  on  the  fund,  less  the  sum 
necessary  to  pay  for  the  publication,  shall  be  paid  to 
the  Lecturer. 

The  Lecturer  shall  also  have  one  half  of  the  nat 
profits  of  the  publication  during  the  first  two  years 
after  the  date  of  publication.     All  other  profits  shall 


6  EXTRACTS. 

be  the  property  of  the  Board,  and  shall  be  added  to 
the  capital  of  the  lectureship. 

We  express  our  preference  that  the  lecture  or 
lectures  shall  be  delivered  in  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  if  such  building  be  in  existence;  and  shall 
be  delivered  in  the  presence  of  all  the  members  of 
the  Institutions  under  the  authority  of  the  Board. 

We  ask  that  the  day  on  which  the  lecture  or  the 
first  of  each  series  of  lectures  shall  be  delivered,  shall 
be  declared  a  holiday. 

We  wish  that  the  nomination  to  this  lectureship 
shall  be  restricted  by  no  other  consideration  than  the 
ability  of  the  appointee  to  discharge  the  duty  to  the 
highest  glory  of  God  in  the  completest  presentation 
of  the  subject.  We  desire  that  the  lectures  shall  be 
published  in  uniform  shape,  and  that  a  copy  of  each 
shall  be  placed  in  the  libraries  of  Bexley  Hall,  Ken- 
yon  College  and  of  the  Philomethesian  and  the  Nu 
Pi  Kappa  Society.  Asking  the  favorable  consider- 
ation of  the  Board  of  Trustees, 

We  remain  with  great  respect, 
I  G.  T.  Bedell, 

Julia  Bedell. 

The  Board  accepted  the  p^ift,  approved  the 
terms,  named  All  Saints'  Day,  November  the 
first,  as  Founders'  Day,  and  made  it  a  holi- 
day. 


LECTURE   I. 


I  COUNT  it  no  small  privilege  to  be  permitted 
to  join  in  the  services  of  a  day  like  this.  The 
foundation  on  which  I  am  honored  with  the 
position  of  first  lecturer,  and  which  has  been  so 
nobly  provided  for  all  coming  time  by  the  pious 
forecast  and  thoughtfulness  of  those  whose  good 
works  for  "Christ  and  the  Church"  have  been 
so  manifold,  is  itself  something  to  which  a  day 
of  grateful  commemoration  might  well  be  de- 
voted. It  takes  its  place,  however,  with  other 
commemorations  which  carry  us  back  over  the 
history  of  three  generations.  I  cannot  forget, 
this  day,  that  he  who  came  hither  long  years 
ago,  to  lay  the  foundations  on  which  this  goodly 
superstructure  has  arisen,  came  from  the  dio- 
cese in  which  my  lot  is  cast ;  and  I,  therefore, 
rejoice  the  more  that  I  am  permitted  to  share 
in  the  services  of  the  first  celebration  of  Found- 
ers' Day. 

On  such  a  day,  too — how  appropriately  joined 


8  BEDELL   LECTURES. 

to  the  commemoration  of  All  Saints — it  cannot, 
I  think,  be  inappropriate  to  speak  of  the  evi- 
dences of  Christianity.  Since  whatever  other 
evidences  there  may  be  found — and  God  be 
praised  for  their  manifold  variety — the  grandest 
of  all  must  ever  be  the  lives  and  deaths  of  that 
"great  cloud  of  witnesses  of  whom  the  world 
was  not  worthy." 

But  I  must  not  linger  on  thoughts  like  these, 
grateful  as  they  are,  and  I  turn  to  address  my- 
self to  my  proper  duty. 

When  we  speak  of  Christian  Evidences  what 
a  boundless  field  of  thought  and  discussion 
opens  before  us !  We  touch  the  world  of 
nature  and  the  world  of  man.  We  come  into 
contact  with  natural  science,  with  human  his- 
tory, with  the  inductions  of  observation,  with 
the  deductions  of  reason,  with  weighing  of  tes- 
timony, with  the  profoundest  needs  and  the 
loftiest  aspirations  of  humanity.  We  have  to 
deal  with  the  internal,  or  subjective,  evidence  in 
the  individual  mind,  and  with  those  proofs  that 
are  addressed  to  the  reasoning  faculties  in  man.^ 

Moreover,  when  from  such  general  survey 
as  we   can   make   of  this  field   of  thought,  to 

'  Palmer's  Doctrine  of  Development  and  Conscience,  p.  2. 


LECTURE  I.  9 

which  there  seem  to  be  no  limits,  we  descend 
to  details,  how  endlessly  various  we  find  those 
details  to  be.  To  say  nothing  of  Apostolic 
days,  from  the  time  when  Justin  Martyr^  began 
the  first  Apology  for  Christianity  "  by  urging 
the  claims  of  truth,"  down  to  the  present  day, 
each  succeeding  age  has  brought  out  its  own 
special  line  of  attack,  demanding  a  parallel  line 
of  defence  or  assertion.  The  general  character 
of  the  conflict  has  been  marked  by  a  change- 
lessness  that  is  even  sublime,  but  the  successive 
forms  of  the  onset  and  the  resistance  have 
shifted  like  the  rapid  movements  of  some  vast 
battle-field. 

Out  of  all  this  has  arisen  the  necessity  of 
guarding  against  two  great  mistakes  :  first,  that 
of  forgetting  in  our  attention  to  details  wider 
and  more  comprehensive  lines  of  argument ; 
and  secondly, — if  indeed  this  is  not  a  form  of 
the  mistake  just  mentioned, — that  of  giving  to 
some  immediate  and  pressing  attack  an  impor- 
tance which  does  not  fairly  belong  to  it.  For 
instance,  so  much  attention  has  been  given  of 
late  to  scientific  difficulties,^  to  the  relations,  as 

^  First  Apology,  Sec.  2. 

^  Perhaps  one  might  better  say  the  difficulties  raised  by  writers 
on  science.     Ernest  Naville  well  says:   "There  have  often  been 


lO  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

the  phrase  goes,  between  science  and  religion, 
that  we  have  left  much  out  of  sight  the  great 
historical  argument.  Nor  only  that ;  where  the 
historical  argument  has  been  worked,  it  has 
sometimes  been  with  an  attention  to  details — 
the  value  and  power  of  which  should  by  no 
means  be  underrated — that  has  led  men  away 
from  those  wider  and  grander  views  which  that 
argument  can  employ,  with  such  persuasive 
power,  in  asserting  the  claims  of  the  Faith  and 
the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord. 

In  the  two  lectures  which  it  has  become  my 
duty  to  deliver,  I  propose,  by  God's  blessing,  to 
present  one  form  of  the  general  historical  argu- 
ment which  seems  to  me  to  be  a  strong  one ; 
and  that  not  so  much  in  the  negative  way  of 
defence,  as  in  the  positive  way  of  assertion.  I 
am  not  at  all  sure  that  the  charge  will  not  be 
brought  against  positions  and  method  alike, 
that  they  are  quite  old-fashioned  and  out  of 
date.  I  am  altogether  sure  that  they  ought 
neither  to  be  forgotten  nor  abandoned. 

Let  us  find,  then,  our  starting-point  in  a  fact 
which  no  man  will  question.     When  we  look 

conflicts  between  theology  and  science,  or  rather  between  theologians 
and  naturalists;  for  between  belief  in  God  and  science  there  is  a 
profound  harmony." — Le  Christ,  p.  53. 


LECTURE  I.  II 

around  the  civilized  world  we  find  everywhere 
in  it  some  form  of  Christianity. 

And  whatever  the  form  may  be,  it  rests  for 
its  authentication  and  its  motive  power,  nay, 
for  its  life  and  being,  on  one  person,  Jesus  of 
Nazareth. 

Whatever  else  these  forms  may  differ  in,  they 
all  agree  in  this.  They  all  assert  that  at  a  cer- 
tain definite  period  in  the  world's  history,  there 
lived  in  Palestine  one  who  was  known  as  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  and  that  he  was  the  author  of  that 
Faith  and  the  founder  of  that  Church  which  are 
embraced  in  the  general  term  Christianity. 

From  this  unquestioned  and  unquestionable 
position  we  advance  to  another  equally  undoubt- 
ed and  unassailable.  We  find,  on  testimony 
which  can  neither  be  gainsayed  nor  evaded,  that 
at  the  time  and  in  the  place  asserted,  such  a 
person  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth  did  actually  live, 
and  that  from  Him  Christianity  came  as  from  a 
founder. 

It  was  the  fashion  in  some  quarters,  in  the 
last  century,  to  assert  that  no  such  person  as 
Jesus  Christ  ever  existed  ;^  but  such  a  position 
would  hardly  be  assumed   to-day.      Indeed  it 

*  Dupuis,  for  instance,  in  his  Origine  de  tous  les  cultes,  published 
in  1795. 


12  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

could  not  be  without  shaking  down  all  historic 
testimony  whatever,  and  reducing  all  the  history 
of  all  time  to  a  dream  or  a  falsehood. 

The  scornful  words  of  Tacitus,^  "  The  author 
of  this  name  [Christian]  was  Christ  who,  in  the 
reign  of  Tiberius,  was  punished  with  death  by 
the  Procurator  Pontius  Pilate,"  are  the  testi- 
mony of  a  heathen  to  a  person  whose  existence 
is  as  truly  historical  as  that  of  the  Emperor  of 
Rome  or  his  representative  in  Palestine.  Nor 
is  this  testimony  confirmed  merely  by  the  ut- 
terances of  believers  of  the  early  days  and  by 
the  historic  creeds  of  all  the  Christian  ages. 
The  early  opposers  and  maligners  of  Christianity, 
be  they  Jews  or  Pagans,  be  they  represented  by 
their  own  words,  or  in  the  apologies  of  those 
who  replied  to  them  ;  the  early  heretics  and  cor- 
rupters of  the  Faith,  be  they  Ebionites  or 
Gnostics  ;  all  these  unanimously  attest  the  his- 
torical verity  of  the  existence  at  a  given  time  in 
Palestine,  of  a  person  known  as  Jesus  of  Na- 
zareth. All  equally  bear  witness  to  the  fact  that 
Christianity  came  from  Him.  To  deny  this  is 
simply  to  destroy  all  history. 

To  these  unquestionable  facts  let  us  add  a 

^   Annals,  Lib.  XV.  c.  44, 


LECTURE  I.  13 

third,  namely,  that  at  the  time  when  He  whom 
we  call  our  Lord  was  to  be  born,  men  were 
everywhere  yearning  and  hoping  for  a  better 
day  than  the  world  had  seen  ;  a  day  of  deliver- 
ance from  manifold  miseries  internal  and  exter- 
nal, a  veritable  golden  age,  wherein  the  world 
that  seemed  dying  around  them,  should  receive 
a  fresh  life — even  a  new  creation. 

The  fire-worshippers  of  Persia,  the  Chinese 
disciples  of  Confucius,  looked  for  the  regenera- 
tion to  arise  in  the  West.  The  nations  of  the 
West,  on  the  other  hand,  looked  eastward.^ 
Tacitus  speaks  of  the  general  persuasion,  found- 
ed on  priestly  writings,  that  in  those  days  the 
East  should  grow  powerful,  and  those  who 
should  come  from  Judea  should  be  masters  of 
the  world,"^  and  Suetonius  ^  repeats  his  words ; 
while  the  vision  of  the  new  and  glorious  age 
is  sung  by  VirgiP  in  words  which,  seeming 
to  echo  those  of  the  Evangelic  Prophet,  are 
themselves  echoed  in  many  a  mediaeval  Chris- 
tian hymn. 

Standing,  now,  at  that  period  in  human  his- 
tory where  we   find  Jesus  of  Nazareth  living 

*  Schaff's  Apostolic  Church,  p.  184. 

I  Hist.  Lib.  V.  c.  13.  8  D^  XII.  Casar,  Lib.  VIH.  4. 

*  Eclogue  IV. 


14  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

upon  earth,  and  where  we  are  breathing  this  at- 
mosphere of  expectation  and  listening  to  these 
words  of  hope,  let  us  look  back  over  what  was 
then  the  long  past  of  the  story  of  our  race  and 
see,  at  least,  something  of  the  work  done  and 
the  preparation  made  for  a  new  order  of  the 
ages,  as  we  say  to-day,  a  new  departure  for  hu- 
manity. Just  how  this  review  falls  into  my 
proposed  line  of  argument  will  appear  as  we 
advance. 

At  first  thought  such  an  undertaking,  even 
when  preceded  by  and  accompanied  with  the 
declaration  that  only  the  most  general  and  even 
cursory  review  will  be  attempted,  must  appear 
almost  absurd. 

The  field,  it  will  be  said,  whether  in  reference 
to  time  or  place,  is  so  vast,  the  details  are  so 
manifold,  that  to  attempt  to  cover  the  one  and 
present  the  other  in  a  single  lecture  can  only  be 
an  act  of  folly.  There  is,  however,  a  considera- 
tion which  must  very  greatly  modify  this  obvi- 
ous criticism. 

Frederick  Schlegel  long  ago  declared  that 
the  number  of  really  historical  countries,  when 
these  are  compared  with  all  the  countries  of 
the  world,  is  relatively  small. ^"^ 

^'^  Phil,  of  History,  p.  io8,  Bohn's  Ed. 


LECTURE  I.  15 

As  the  stream  of  historic  life  and  progress  has 
flowed  onward  from  its  source  in  Central  Asia, 
it  has  moved  within  narrow  limits,  and  its 
course  has  been  ever  westward.  Confining  our 
view  to  the  eastern  hemisphere,  and  we  need 
not  now  look  beyond  it,  we  find  this  stream  of 
historic  life  mainly  limited,  even  to  our  own 
days,  by  the  twenty-fourth  and  sixtieth  degrees 
of  north  latitude.  Those  limits  embrace  not 
more  than  fifteen  really  historical  countries,  and 
even  of  these  not  all  had  fairly  entered  on  their 
development  "when  Jesus  was  born  in  Beth- 
lehem of  Judea."  Indeed  if  we  fix  our  eyes  on 
the  middle  country  of  Western  Asia,  as  it  lies 
on  the  two  great  streams  of  Tigris  and  Eu- 
phrates, and  between  the  Persian  and  Arabian 
gulfs,  and  the  Caspian  and  Mediterranean  seas, 
and  then  look  on  to  Arabia,  Egypt,  Asia  Mi- 
nor, Northern  Africa,  Greece,  and  Italy,  we 
shall  have  glanced  at  all  the  countries  which,  to 
the  time  of  our  Lord,  had  entered  into  that 
development  of  the  race  which  really  consti- 
tutes universal  history. 

For  universal  history,  it  must  be  remembered, 
is  not  a  mere  collection  of  the  detailed  histories 
of  single  nations.  It  concerns  itself  with  the 
general  destiny  of  mankind,  and  does  not  allow 


1 6  BEDELL   LECTURES. 

this  main  subject  to  be  lost  in  the  multitude 
and  variety  of  details.  As,  amid  the  millions 
of  men  who  are  born  and  live  and  die,  there  are 
few  who  can  be  called  historical  men,  so  it  is 
also  with  nations.  Of  these  there  are,  and  there 
must  be,  many  which  ''serve  only  as  a  mark  or 
evidence  of  some  particular  stage  of  civilization, 
without  of  themselves  holding  any  particular 
place  in  the  general  history  of  our  species,  or 
conducing  to  the  social  progress  of  mankind, 
or  possessing  any  weight  or  importance  in  the 
scale  of  humanity."  I  know,  indeed,  and  would 
recognize  the  sublime  truth  with  awe  and  thank- 
fulness, that  to  the  all-seeing  eye  of  God  every 
human  soul  has  its  own  great  history  reaching 
beyond  the  grandest  destinies  of  time  into  the 
mightier  destinies  of  eternity.  But  this  is  God's 
view,  not  ours.  When  we  deal  with  human 
history  we  are  limited  as  He  is  not.  We  deal 
then  with  humanity,  its  triumphs  and  its  fail- 
ures, its  gains  and  its  losses,  its  advances  and  its 
retrogressions,  as  a  whole.  Mankind  is,  and 
must  be  "  all  mass  to  the  human  eye,  even 
though  it  is  all  individual  to  the  Divine."" 
The  task,  therefore,  which  I  have  proposed 

"  Mozley's   Univ.  Sermons,  p.  121. 


LECTURE  I.  17 

is  not  so  hopeless  as  at  first  thought  it  might 
appear.  Difficult  as  it  may  be,  it  is  not  alto- 
gether an  impossibility. 

Far  back,  then,  in  the    story  of  the  human 
race,  so  far  back  that,  in  the  mist  which  shrouds 
them  all  visible  forms  are  dim  and  phantom 
like  and  all  thoughts  of  men  come  to  us  in 
fashions  that  are  vague  and  ill-defined,  I  seem 
to  recognize  a  yearning  for  wider  unions  and 
more   extended   brotherhoods   than    those    of 
family,  or  tribe,  or  clan,  or  even  nation.     What 
is  it,  this  mysterious  impulse  that  carries  men's 
thoughts  and  wishes  onward?     It  looks  mar- 
vellously like  an  instinct  implanted  in  man's 
nature  ;  an  instinct  which  shall  one  day  find  the 
thing  that  fits  it  and  satisfies  its  longings,  albeit, 
in  the  mean  season,  it  may  go  far  astray  in  its 
search  and   waste   its   strength   on   ways  and 
methods  that  end  in  nothing.     No  doubt  this 
instinct  was  early  seized  and  perverted  by  that 
"  spirit  of  enterprise  and  ambition"  which  sprung, 
up  in  and  emanated  from  the  "  great  middle 
country  of  Western  Asia,  the  native  seat  and 
cradle  of  conquest."     It  was  seized  and  per- 
verted so  early  that  men  hardly  remember  how 
true  and  genuine  the  instinct  that  lay  behind 
the  perversion  was.     And  yet  its  influence  was 


1 8  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

incalculable.  It  entered  largely  as  a  living  force 
into  that  successive  uprising  of  empires  which 
the  visions  of  the  prophet  Daniel  so  marvellously 
foreshadow,  and  which  gather  to  themselves  so 
much  of  the  older  history  of  the  human  race. 

Cast  your  eyes  along  that  great  "course  of 
empire ;"  the  Babylonio-Assyrian,  which  first  of 
all  brought  men  together  in  imperial  union  ;  the 
Medo-Persian,  which  bore,  at  last,  the  Orient  to 
the  shores  of  Europe;  the  Grgeco-Macedonian, 
with  its  rapid  rush  of  conquest,  which  carried 
Europe  back  into  the  East,  and  in  its  break-up 
did  such  marvellous  work  for  the  future  of  the 
race ;  and  the  Roman,  which  in  its  irresistible 
march  swept  the  wide  world.  Was  all  this, 
think  you,  merely  the  outcome  of  the  ambition 
of  one  or  another  strong  and  masterful  man  ? 
That  marched,  doubtless,  at  the  front,  but  it 
was  able  to  march  there,  and  to  march  to  con- 
quest, because  of  the  deep  instinctive  feeling  of 
mankind,  that  their  highest  achievements  and 
their  grandest  destiny  required  a  union  and  an 
organism  wider  and  deeper  than  any  that  family 
or  tribe  or  nation  could  present  to  them. 

This  instinct,  too,  it  was  that  from  time  to 
time  spoke  out  in  words  of  sage  or  poet  weary 
of  evil  and  yearning  for  good.    It  shaped  the  re- 


LECTURE  I.  19 

public  of  Plato,  so  noble  amid  all  its  impractica- 
ble ideals  and  abstractions.  It  animated  the  cry 
of  Terence,  "  I  am  a  man  and  nothing  human 
is  alien  to  me."  It  spoke  in  the  verse  of  Clau- 
dian,  when  he  sung  of  Roman  citizens — all  one 
nation — who  drank  from  the  Rhone  and  the 
Orontes,  and  whom  Rome,  in  an  empire  that 
should  know  no  end,  cherished  as  a  mother 
rather  than  ruled  as  a  mistress. ^^ 

So  had  this  course  of  empire  run,  carrying 
along  with  it  men's  instinctive  hopes  and  long- 
ings, and  such  were  its  outcomes  when  our 
Lord  was  born.  It  held  in  its  bosom — so  far 
as  they  shared  in  the  world's  true  history — the 
human  race.  And  more  than  that,  whether 
there  was  in  the  world  only  a  desolation  that 
went  by  the  name  of  peace,  or  whether  the 
peace  was  real,  there  was  such  peace  that  the 
symbolic  temple  of  Janus  was  closed,  and  some 
men  may  have  dreamed  that  in  this  Universal 
State,  the  strong  desire  of  man  for  a  universal 
brotherhood  of  humanity  had  been  attained. 

Was  it  so  ?  Had  the  new  order  of  things, 
the  golden  age,  really  arrived  ?  Were  the  long- 
ings of  all  the  ages  met  ?     A  thought  of  which, 

'^'^  De  Laudlbus  Stilicottis,  Lib.  III.,  line  150  ff. 


20  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

purposely,  I  have  not  yet  spoken,  answers  those 
questions,  and  answers  them  in  the  negative. 
Only  two  factors  in  the  building  up  of  empires 
have  been  named  :  one  the  enterprises  of  ambi- 
tion, the  other  the  longing  for  human  brother- 
hood. There  was  another,  which  gave  the  first 
its  greatest  power  and  crushed  down  or  swal- 
lowed up  the  second,  and  that  is  found  in  the 
debased  passions  and  ferocious  hatreds  of  men. 
Till  these  were  touched  no  empire  met  the 
longing  desires  of  men,  or  could  satisfy  the  in- 
stinct of  which  I  have  been  speaking.  The 
great  disturbing  cause,  the  root  of  bitterness, 
remained.  Wherefore  the  apparent  peace  and 
repose  of  that  year  of  Augustus  in  which  wars, 
for  the  time,  had  ceased  could  not,  in  the  very 
nature  of  things,  be  a  finality.  Human  needs 
were  not  met  nor  were  human  longings  satis- 
fied. Another  and  a  higher  peace  must  descend, 
and  "  be  made  visible  on  the  earth — and  along 
with  that  higher  and  diviner  peace,  a  new  and 
spiritual  combat,  waged  not  with  the  warlike 
parties  of  old,  nor  even  with  external  and  earth- 
ly power,  but  with  the  secret  and  internal  cause 
of  all  the  agitations  and  all  the  injustice  in  the 
world."  ^'^     How,  by  whom,  in  what,  this  peace 

'^  Schlegel,  ut  sup.  p.  203. 


LECTURE  I.  21 

and  combat  were  to  come,  I  shall  try,  in  due 
time,  to  show.  Just  now  we  must  pass  on  from 
these  very  general  views  to  others  that  are  more 
specific. 

Were  I,  now,  to  take  the  countries  and  peo- 
ples we  are  to  consider  in  strict  order  of  chron- 
ology, Egypt  would  claim  our  first  attention. 
But  its  great  preparatory  work  for  a  crisis  in 
the  world's  history  and  a  new  order  of  mankind 
really  took  place  in  the  break-up  of  the  Grseco- 
Macedonian  Empire;  and,  therefore,  I  turn 
from  it  to  that  noblest  land  of  the  ancient  world 
— Greece. 

Nature  herself  marked  this  land  as  one  of 
manifold  activities  and  varied  Hfe.  Think  of 
"  its  advantages  in  reference  to  navigation,  com- 
merce," and  colonization.  It  is  situated  in  the 
immediate  vicinity  of  the  three  great  quarters 
of  the  globe,  and  is  washed  on  three  sides  by 
the  sea.  Look  at  its  remarkable  coast  line,  so 
irregular,  so  indented  with  bays  and  harbors, 
and  so  enormous  in  proportion  to  the  super- 
ficial area  of  the  country.^"*  A  nation  dwelling 
in  such  a  land  must  do  what  the  dwellers  in 
the  vast  plain  of  Central  Asia  never  could  have 

'*  Heeren,  Man.  of  Ancient  History,  p.  90.  Freeman's  Historical 
Geography,  Introd.  §  2. 


22  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

done  ;  they  must  build  ships,  they  must  engage 
in  commerce  and  maritime  adventure.  They 
are  very  hkely  to  become  a  colonizing  people. 
They  may,  if  they  will,  carry,  as  England  and 
America  have  done  in  our  time,  their  language 
into  every  part  of  the  known  world. 

Then  take  into  view  the  varied  surface,  moun- 
tains, valleys,  plains,  which  this  country  pre- 
sents ;  the  variety  of  climate  which  is  thus  pro- 
duced ;  a  variety,  however,  which  does  not  inter- 
fere with  its  general  mildness,  and  which,  taken 
in  connection  with  its  numerous  small  streams 
and  the  qualities  of  its  soil,  make  up  a  country 
in  which  "every  branch  of  cultivation  may  be 
prosecuted  equally  and  in  conjunction." 

Consider,  finally,  the  manifold  diversities  in 
race — composed  of  so  many  heterogeneous  ele- 
ments,— in  civilization,  in  history,  in  legislation, 
in  forms  of  government,  in  habits  of  thought 
and  life,  in  poetry,  arts,  science,  in  a  word  in 
all  that  goes  to  the  make  up  of  a  nation's  being, 
which  this  wonderful  land  presents  ;  contrast 
all  this  with  "the  seclusion  and  monotonous 
character  of  Asiatic  influence,  the  generally  un- 
changeable uniformity  of  Oriental  society,"  and 
you  have  the  pledge  of  an  intellectual  develop- 
ment and  an  artistic  culture,  the  promise  of  a 


LECTURE  I.  23 

bloom  and  a  glory  that  you  find  nowhere  else 
in  all  the  ancient  world. 

The  pledge  and  the  promise  were  fulfilled. 
As  near  as  human  effort  can  approach  perfec- 
tion without  supernatural  aid,  so  near  to  per- 
fection Greek  culture  came.  All  that  painting 
and  sculpture  can  achieve  without  the  inspira- 
tion of  a  divine  ideal  to  fill  the  artist's  soul  and 
guide  his  pencil  or  his  chisel,  that  Greek  art 
achieved.  All  that  philosophy  can  accomplish 
without  a  divine  law  to  shape  its  precepts,  and 
a  divine  sanction  and  a  divine  life  to  give  it 
a  motive  power  and  make  it  effectual  to  the 
advancement  of  mankind,  that  Greek  philoso- 
phy accomplished  :  while  Greek  commerce  and 
colonization  carried  throughout  the  world — 
making  it  a  universal  medium  of  communica- 
tion— a  language  richer  and  more  harmonious, 
more  capable  of  giving  to  words  nice  shades 
of  meaning,  and  expressing  all  subtle  play  of 
thought,  and  distinguishing  in  utterance  things 
that  differ,  than  any  language  that  human  lips 
had  ever  spoken.  As  one  looks  upon  it  all, 
its  brightness  dazzles  and  confuses, 

" sinking  far, 

And  self  withdrawn  into  a  wondrous  depth, 
Far  sinking  into  splendor  without  end." 


24  BEDELL   LECTURES. 

Alas  that  it  was  all  so  powerless  !  Alas  that  it 
left  Greece  "a  lazar  house  of  morals."  ^^ 

Naturally,  I  might  turn  here  to  Judaism  and 
the  Jewish  Nation,  and  speak  of  what  they 
directly  did  for  and  contributed  to  the  universal 
history  of  the  world.  For  reasons,  however, 
that  need  hardly  be  stated  in  detail,  I  wish,  in 
the  present  argument,  to  keep  outside  the  limits 
of  revelation,  and,  therefore,  will  only  say  of 
Judaism  that  with  all  its  great  endowments,  its 
knowledge  of  the  one  true  God,  its  pure  moral- 
ity, its  covenant  privileges,  it  had  lost  its  living 
power,  and  was  ending  in  those  three  miserable 
"  tendencies  which  are  usually  found  to  arise 
when  a  religion  decays,  namely,  sanctimonious 
formalism,  trifling  infidelity,  and  mystic  super- 
stition."^^ 

Still,  there  was  an  indirect  work  of  Judaism 
which  does  come  very  directly  into  our  present 
line  of  argument.  It  is  found  in  the  contact  of 
Judaism  with  Heathenism ;  and  its  story — 
briefly  to  be  told — opens  out  some  of  the  most 
striking  pages  in  the  history  of  the  world. 

Judaism  had,  indeed,  touched  heathenism 
from  its  early  days.     Necessary  contacts  with 

'^  Sewell's  Christian  Morals,  p.  43. 
"  Schaff's  Apostolic  Church,  p.  172. 


LECTURE  I.  25 

surrounding  tribes  and,  later  on,  the  widely  ex- 
tended commerce  of  Solomon  effected  this. 

The  Babylonish  captivity  must  have  greatly 
multiplied  these  points  of  contact,  and  given 
permanence  and  power  to  the  influence  which 
they  enabled  Jewish  faith  and  thought  to  ex- 
ercise. But  there  is  one  place  to  which,  above 
all  others,  we  must  look  for  the  nearest  approach 
that  Judaism  made,  whether  to  Greek  or  Ori- 
ental thought  and  culture,  and  for  the  greatest 
influence  it  had  upon  or  received  from  them. 

It  was  a  dream  of  Alexander  the  Great  to 
build,  on  the  coast  of  Egypt,  a  city  that  should 
bear  his  name  and  be  a  centre  of  commercial  en- 
terprise as  well  as  the  metropolis  of  his  western 
empire.  His  dream  was  more  than  realized.  For 
under  the  first  three  Ptolemies,  whose  reigns 
filled  out  the  years  of  a  century,  Alexandria  be- 
came a  centre  not  less  of  science  and  learninpf 
than  of  trade.  The  days  of  these  Ptolemies 
were  days  of  desolation  and  destruction  in  the 
world.  But  for  these  great  princes,  so  far  as  man 
can  see,  science  and  learning  must  have  perished 
from  the  earth  amid  a  darkness  that  might  be  felt. 
But  under  their  fostering  care  science  and  learn- 
ing "found  more  than  a  shelter,  they  found  a  ral- 
lying point."     Nor  did  the  glory  and  the  power 


26  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

of  Alexandria  pass  quite  away  till  an  illiterate 
barbarian  sacrificed  its  magnificent  library  in 
the  brutal  ignorance  of  his  execrable  fanaticism. 
A  thoughtful  scholar  of  our  own  time  has  said, 
speaking  of  Christian  Alexandria,  "to  the  last, 
Alexandria  fulfilled  its  mission,  and  we  still  owe 
much  to  the  spirit  of  its  great  teachers,  which, 
in  still  later  ages,  struggled,  not  without  success, 
against  the  sterner  systems  of  the  West."^'' 

Jews,  Greeks,  Egyptians,  were  the  chief  classes 
of  the  inhabitants  of  this  most  attractive  city ; 
but  mingled  with  them  were  the  representatives 
of  almost  every  nation  of  the  then  known  world. 
And  thus  it  came  to  pass  that  all  varieties  of 
mind,  all  forms  of  thought,  were  brought  to- 
gether there.  Greek  activity,  vivacity  and  rest- 
less energy  ;  Oriental  conservatism,  faith  and 
quietism  ;  Jewish  shrewdness  and  love  of  spec- 
ulation ;  creeds  of  East  and  West ;  clashings  and 
strifes  of  dogma  ;  indirect  influences  of  various 
literatures  and  philosophies  upon  each  other ; 
all  these  brought  together  in  Alexandria,  and 
then  carried  out  from  it,  must  have  told  mightily 
on  the  mind  of  the  world.  It  is  often  and  truly 
said — sometimes  (and  then  untruly) in  a  carping 

"  Prof.  Westcott  in  Sinit/is  Bible  Diet.,  art.,  "Alexandria." 


LECTURE  I.  27 

way — that  "the  literary  school  of  Alexandria 
was  critical  and  not  creative."  Still  let  us  not 
forget  that  there  language  was  studied,  the 
records  of  all  the  past  collected,  and  the  exact 
sciences  perfected.  Well  does  Heeren  ask, 
"  Suppose  the  critic's  art,  which  now  grew  up, 
could  not  form  a  Homer  or  a  Sophocles,  should 
we,  had  it  not  been  for  the  Alexandrians,  be 
able  to  read  either  Homer  or  Sophocles  ?" 
Above  all,  let  us  remember  that  there  the  elder 
Scriptures  were  translated  into  the  then  univer- 
sal language  of  mankind,  and,  in  the  venerable 
Septuagint  version,  given  to  the  world.  And 
here,  for  the  present,  I  leave  this  centre  of 
thought  and  influence,  only  adding  that  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  recur  to  it  again. 

Over  all  the  lands  at  which  we  have  glanced, 
over  all  the  wrecks  of  all  the  great  ancient  em- 
pires, over  Greece  and  Palestine  and  Egypt, 
swept  the  resistless  power  of  Rome.  Ordained 
to  rule  the  world,  the  Roman  Empire  completed 
the  work  that  Alexander  had  begun.  It  broke 
down  many  a  barrier,  it  bridged  over  many  a 
gulf,  and,  to  speak  of  no  other  things  which 
it  accompUshed,  it  brought  the  whole  civilized 
world  into  one  State  and  ruled  it  by  one  Law. 

As  Greece  had  brought  men  together  by  her 


28  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

ships  which  navigated  that  great  central  sea 
around  which  were  gathered  all  the  elements  of 
human  civilization,  so  Rome,  by  her  marvellous 
far-stretching  roads,  bound  together  all  parts  of 
her  world-wide  empire.  These  wonderful  con- 
structions, "  issuing  from  the  Forum  of  Rome, 
traversed  Italy,  pervaded  the  provinces,  and 
were  terminated  only  by  the  frontiers."  They 
ran  "  like  railroads,  straight  as  arrows,"  from 
one  extremity  of  the  empire  to  the  other. ^^ 

Never  before  had  the  human  race  been  so 
brought  together,  never,  apparently,  so  put  in 
the  way  of  being  welded  into  one  state,  as  by 
these  two  agencies — the  law  and  the  roads  of 
Rome.  And  yet  no  real  welding  was  accom- 
plished. There  was  outside  pressure  enough 
and  to  spare.  The  difficulty  was  internal,  and 
though  it  was  the  resultant,  doubtless,  of  many 
factors,  there  was  one  thing  above  all  others,  I 
think,  which  produced  it.  It  is  difficult  to 
state  this  fact  in  a  brief  way,  and  yet  the  at- 
tempt must  be  made. 

Law,  then,  presents  itself  first  as  strict  and 


'8  Gibbon,  Vol.  I,  p.  31,  Harper's  Ed.  Stanley's  Eastern  Church, 
p.  182,  Am.  Ed.  Gibbon  says  that  from  the  wall  of  Antoninus  to 
Rome,  and  thence  to  Jerusalem,  the  road  measured  four  thousand 
and  eighty  Roman  miles. 


LECTURE  I.  29 

absolute ;  and  secondly,  as  tempered  and  mod- 
erated by  considerations  of  equity.     Now  "if 
this  last  conciliating   principle   does  not   pro- 
nounce its  sentence,  or  if  it  is  not  attended  to, 
extreme  injustice   only   can  spring   from   this 
rigid  and  inflexible  application  of  extreme  law." 
Then  the  more  law  there  is  the  less  justice  will 
there  be.     Summa  lex  summa  injuria,  is  the 
proverb  in  which  this  truth  has  been  expressed. 
As  one  has  well  said,  "  Woe  to  mankind,  woe 
to    every  individual,  woe    to  the  world,  were 
they  doomed  to  be   judged  according  to  this 
rigid  justice,  and  only  by  it,  even  by  Him,  who 
alone  has  the  right  and  the  power  to  dispense 
such  rigid  and  severe  justice  unto  men."     Only 
one  who  is  incapable  of  error  can  dare  to  judge 
in   this  wise.      And  He — His  holy  name  be 
praised ! — does  not  so  judge  men.     He  takes 
all  circumstances,  all  conditions,  all  opportuni- 
ties, all  degrees  of  light  and  knowledge  into 
account,  and  not  only  "  in  the  midst  of  judg- 
ment remembers  mercy,"  but  tempers  all  strict 
law  by  a  most  righteous  equity. 

Now  Roman  law  had  in  it  little  or  no  room 
for  equity.  It  was  strict,  absolute,  inexorable 
in  the  letter.  When  Roman  jurists  said,  Fiat 
justitia    ruat    coelum  —  let    justice    be    done 


30  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

though  the  heavens  shall  fall — they  meant  just 
that  strict,  absolute,  inexorable  letter.  So  that, 
however  true  and  good  that  letter  might  be,  its 
administration,  untempered  by  the  manifold 
circumstances  of  which  equity  takes  account, 
could  be  neither  good  nor  true.  It  must  pro- 
voke reactions,  oppositions,  contests.  If  it  did 
bind  men  externally  in  iron  bonds,  it  yet  drove 
them  asunder  by  internal  repulsions.  It  did 
not,  it  could  not,  meet  men's  needs.  Its  de- 
fect was  fundamental,  nay,  it  was  fatal. 

This  was  bad  enough.  But  there  was  more 
and  worse.  This  false  theory  of  absolute  law 
led  on  to  political  idolatry  of  the  state.  For 
that  which  administered  such  a  law,  might  well 
seem  the  impersonation  of  that  great  deity  of 
the  Prometheus  Vinctus,  whose  two  demons. 
Force  and  Might,  presided  over  the  nailing  of 
the  victim  to  the  rock  ;  nay,  the  impersonation 
even  of  that  all-powerful  Necessity  which  is 
over  all,  and  to  which  Homer  makes  Zeus  him- 
self an  obedient  slave. 

In  time  this  deified  state  became  incarnate  in 
the  persons  of  successive  emperors,  and  then 
the  emperor  was  also  deified,  and  Nero  and 
Caligula  were  gods  !  No  possibility  of  worship 
remained  to  heathen  Rome  "but  the  worship  of 


LECTURE  /.  31 

power/'  and  this  power  was  incarnate  in  the 
sovereign  of  the  world.  It  had  all  ended  in 
this.  The  gods  of  the  old  mythology  had  van- 
ished away  before  the  *' unknown  God  "was 
preached  at  Athens  by  St.  Paul.^^ 

Let  me  now  gather  up  and  summarize  these 
manifold  preparations  for  a  possible  future  of 
humanity,  a  new  order  and  a  nobler  one,  which, 
in  our  rapid  survey,  we  have  noted.  I  have  not 
even  tried  to  speak  of  all  these  preparations. 
Only  the  more  salient  and  important  have  been 
named;  while,  for  the  reason  already  men- 
tioned, the  direct  preparations  of  the  Jewish 
GEconomy  have  been  purposely  passed  by,  and 
its  indirect  work  alone  has  been  considered. 

The  point  in  human  history  at  which  we 
stand,  it  must  be  remembered,  is  just  before 
our  Lord  was  born.  As  we  look  back  over  the 
wide  field  we  have  glanced  at,  what  do  we  be- 
hold ? 

We  see  that  deeply  rooted  instinct  of  humani- 
ty which  longs  for  even  universal  brotherhoods 
and  unions,  living  and  working  through  the 
ages,  and,  even  when  it  is  not  actively  at  work, 
living  still  in  yearning  souls.     We  see  the  arts, 

"  Schlegel,  tit  sup.  pp.  264-267.  Conybeare  and  Howson,  Life 
of  St.  Paul,  c.  xxvi. 


32  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

philosophy,  laws  of  reasoning,  outcomes  of 
imagination,  carried  to  a  point  beyond  which 
human  powers  can  scarcely  go.  We  see  a  uni- 
versal language,  so  perfect  that  the  highest  praise 
that  can  be  given  to  any  later  tongue  is  that  it 
approaches  its  marvellous  capabilities.  We  see 
Greek  ships  carrying  men  from  one  region  to 
another ;  and  Roman  roads  completing  the  op. 
portunities  of  intercourse  thus  given  to  the 
world,  breaking  up  old  isolations,  breaking 
down  old  barriers,  so  that  "many  shall  run  to 
and  fro,  and  knowledge  shall  be  increased."  ^"^ 
We  see  scholars  gathered  at  Alexandria  just 
when  the  "abomination  of  desolation"  seemed 
to  be  sweeping  over  the  world,  and  then  scat- 
tered from  thence  over  the  world  again,  with 
the  sacred  books  of  the  Jew  translated  into  the 
universal  language.  And  finally  we  see  the 
iron  Roman  law,  the  law  of  "the  ever  pros- 
perous, the  eternally  powerful,  the  world  de- 
vouring, the  people  destroying  Rome,"  bind- 
ing the  nations  into  one  by  its  strong  external 
bonds,  even  though  powerless  to  prevent  in- 
ternal disunions  and  repulsions. 

What    a    spectacle    it    is!      What    solemn 

3»Dan.  XII..  4. 


LECTURE  I.  33 

thoughts  of  its  own  present  does  it  awaken  ! 
What  possibihties  for  a  future  not  its  own  does 
it  suggest !  Are  all  these  things  to  come  to 
nought?  Are  they  simply  to  flash  upon  the 
sight  as  meteors  flash  across  the  sky  and  then 
go  out  in  darkness?  Is  there  to  come,  for 
the  world,  no  person,  no  system,  no  institution 
that  can  gather  up  all  those  agencies  with  all 
their  possibilities  and  powers,  and  use  them  for 
an  advancement  of  the  race  such  as  has  never 
before  been  reached?  The  world  has,  as  we 
may  say,  stopped  for  a  space  in  its  troubled 
career.  There  is,  outwardly  at  least,  the  hush 
of  peace  among  the  nations.  And  in  that  hush 
these  questions  come  to  us.  How  the  men  of 
that  age  pondered  them  ;  what  the  men  of  that 
age  felt  of  hope  and  anticipation  or  of  fear  and 
despair ;  what  the  story  of  the  then  long  future 
has  to  say  in  answer  to  them,  will,  God  willing, 
engage  our  thoughts  when  we  meet  again. 

Meanwhile,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  when 
men,  in  various  lands  and  in  successive  asres, 
have  been  laboring  without  concert,  each  doing 
his  own  work  and  then  lying  down  in  death  ; 
and  when  each  of  those  isolated  works  is  still 
found  to  have  its  place  and  function  in  some 
grander  nobler  work,  which  takes  them  all  up 


34  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

and  uses  them  for  its  own  great  purposes  ;  more 
than  that,  when  men's  perverse  and  evil  pas- 
sions are,  in  their  outcomes,  made  themselves  to 
serve  such  higher  purposes  and  help  on  such 
more  beneficient  and  gracious  ends,  he  cannot 
be  a  weak  man,  or  the  victim  of  a  foolish  super- 
stition, who  shall  say,  "  The  Lord  is  King,  be 
the  people  never  so  impatient ;  He  sitteth  be- 
tween the  cherubim  be  the  earth  never  so  un- 
quiet." 


LECTURE  II. 


The  close  of  my  previous  lecture  left  us  not 
amid  the  ruins,  but  amid  the  possibilities,  that 
surrounded  the  men  of  the  period  when  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  was  born  in  Judea.  It  can  scarce- 
ly be  necessary  to  recapitulate  those  elements 
of  a  possible  advance,  those  factors  in  a  possible 
future  for  humanity.  In  all  of  them,  under  the 
guidance  of  God,  men  had  "builded  better  than 
they  knew."  Their  rough  hewing  had  been 
shaped  for  higher  ends  than  they  could  dream 
of.  At  this  point,  we  turn  from  the  past  to 
glance  briefly  at  the  then  present  before  we 
look  at  the  coming  future. 

And  first,  we  ask.  How  did  the  men  of  the 
time  regard  these  various  elements,  factors, 
possibilities  ?  What  thoughts  were  awakened, 
what  energies  were  aroused,  what  impulses 
were  given  by  them  ? 

The  view  which  these  questions  open  to  us 
is  a  strange  one.     Were  we  dealing  with  any- 


36  BEDELL  LECTURES  ' 

thing  but  human  nature  and  its  workings,  we 
might  well  turn  away  in  despair  from  its  incon- 
sistencies and  contradictions. 

Nothing  is  more  striking,  as  we  look  back 
upon  the  times  we  are  reviewing,  than  the  pro- 
found and  utter  hopelessness  for  the  present 
that  everywhere  we  see  and  hear.  Poets,  his- 
torians, naturalists,  moralists  are  all  at  one  in 
this.  Everywhere  there  is  this  undertone — not 
always  an  undertone — of  blank  despair.  It 
sounds  forth  from  song  and  satire  ;  sometimes 
bidding  men  to  snatch  the  passing  pleasure  of 
the  day,  its  wild  revelry  and  wanton  mirth ; 
sometimes  urging  them  to  seek  for  refuge  in  a 
proud,  self-sufficient,  heartless  resignation — 
that  was  no  real  resignation — the  principles  of 
which,  if  carried  out,  must  logically  end,  as  they 
often  actually  ended,  in  suicide.  Thus  men 
were  vibrating  between  a  frivolous  Epicureanism 
and  a  self-deified  Stoicism.^^    It  was  under  the 


^'  Both  these  philosophies  were  really  philosophies  of  despair. 
The  one  made  happiness,  the  other  virtue  the  supreme  good.  But 
the  happiness  of  the  Epicurean  was  a  serenity  too  superficial  and 
frivolous  to  be  disturbed  in  its  round  of  pleasure  ;  the  virtue  of  the 
Stoic  was  a  passionlessness  too  proud  and  self-contained  to  care 
for  anything.  Neither  system  had  that  in  it  which  could  meet 
men's  wants.  See  Bp.  Lightfoot's  "St.  Paul  and  Seneca,"  in  his 
Commentary  on  the  Philippians. 


LECTURE  II.  37 

dominion  of  this  dark  despair  that  Rome's 
great  historian  began  his  history  with  words  so 
fearful,  speaking  of  nothing  upon  earth  but 
"  darkness  and  cruel  habitations,"  beholding 
nothine  in  the  heavens  but  manifest  tokens  of 
coming  vengeance.  I  need  not  swell  the  cata- 
logue with  names.  There  is  all  around  the 
same  cry  of  woe  ;  man's  wretchedness,  death's 
blessedness  are  its  burden.^ 

But  along  with  all  these  cries  of  despair  over 
the  present,  there  were  also  utterances  of  hope 
for  the  future.  I  have  already  spoken  of  these, 
and  need  not  repeat  what  has  been  said  before. 
How  the  deliverance  was  to  come,  who  was  to 
be  the  deliverer,  no  man  could  tell.  Easterns 
were  looking  westward,  westerns  were  looking 
eastward,  each  away  from  themselves  to  other 
and  far-off  regions,  each  forward  from  the  hope- 
less present  to  some  unknown  future.  It  is  a 
strange  spectacle.  The  longer  we  dwell  on  it 
the  stranger  it  appears.  Let  it  suffice  to  have 
thus  brought  it,  in  its  contradictions  of  despair 
and  hope,  before  your  minds. 


"''  It  is  obvious  to  refer  to  Horace,  Juvenal,  and  Persius.  The 
passage  specially  referred  to  in  Tacitus  is,  Hist.  Lib.  I.  3.  See 
also  for  a  summary,  not  at  all  exaggerated,  Dr.  Schaff's  Apostolic 
Church,  pp.  158-59. 


38  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

We  see  to-day  that  there  was  nothing,  at  that 
period,  in  all  the  world  that  could  lift  man  out 
of  the  mire  and  clay,  and  set  his  feet  upon  a 
rock,  and  so  order  his  goings  that  he  might 
walk  in  light,  and  live  and  move  under  the 
power  of  what  should  be,  in  very  deed,  a  new 
creation.  And,  besides,  that  which  was  to  the 
men  of  that  time  the  impenetrable  darkness  of 
a  hidden  future,  is  to  us  the  clear  and  distinct 
history  of  all  the  centuries  of  a  lengthened  past ; 
and  to  that  history  we  look — we  have  a  right 
to  look — for  the  answer  to  these  cries  of  de- 
spair, these  murmurings  of  hope,  that  reach  us 
across  the  vast  expanse  of  ages. 

There  were  religions  and  philosophies  in  the 
world  then,  others  have  made  their  appearance 
since.  What  one  of  these,  if  any,  has  taken  up 
those  various  elements  that  we  beheld,  and 
used  them  all  for  the  advancement  of  the  race  ? 
What  one  of  these  has  proved  itself  possessed 
of  the  capability  of  universal  adaptation,  of  a 
permanence  which  is  living  and  not  fossilized, 
and  of  the  power  of  continuous  and  limitless 
expansion  ?  ^  These  three  marks  or  signs  I 
hold  to  be  not  only  noteworthy  but  crucial.    A 

"^"^  Eaton's  Bampton  Lectures  for  1872.     Lect.  I. 


LECTURE  II.  39 

system  in  which  they  are  not  found — whether  it 
contains  doctrinal  or  ethical   truth  or  both — 
cannot  be  one  fitted  to  meet  the  hopes  or  fulfil 
the  destinies  of  man.     It  may  contain  elements 
of  truth,  and  those  elements  may  give  it— must 
give  it— a  certain  degree  of  power.     They  may 
adapt  it,  within  circumscribed  limits,  to  the  at- 
tainments of  a  race,  an  age,  or  a  country.    They 
may  give  it  a  permanence  which  turns  out,  on 
examination,  to  be  the  permanence  of  a  sealed 
up  corpse  that  crumbles  into   dust  when  light 
and  air  are  let  in  upon  it.     They  may  work  for 
it  an  expansion  that  may  continue  for  a  time, 
but  that  comes  at  last  to  an  end.     Such  a  sys- 
tem carries  within  itself  its  own  doom  of  death. 
It   proves  itself  incapable  of  doing   that   for 
humanity  which  the  very  instincts  of  humanity 
demand.     There  is  still  another  question  that 
may  well  be   asked,  although  it   may  appear 
to  be  covered  by  those  that  have  gone  before. 
What  system  has  most  thoroughly  developed 
human  intelligence  and  given  the  greatest  im- 
pulse to  the  arts  and  industries  that  in  our  time 
have  achieved  such  triumphs  ?     I  hold  that  any 
system,  institution,  religion  ^  which,  in  the  lapse 


'*  I  use  this  word,  fully  holding  Christianity  to  be  more  than  a 


40  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

of  ages,  has  shown  itself  competent  for  such 
achievements  as  these  questions  indicate  ;  which 
has  been  able  to  gather  up  all  those  prepara- 
tions of  all  previous  time  and  use  them  for  the 
best  interests  of  the  race  ;  which  has  shown 
itself  possessed  of  capabilities  of  adaptation  to 
all  nations  under  all  conditions  of  life,  raising 
them,  meantime,  towards,  if  not  to,  its  own 
ideal  of  what  men  should  be  ;  which  has  proved 
itself  permanent,  not  as  being  fossilized  into 
immobility  but  possessed  of  an  ever  animating 
life  ;  which  has  exhibited  a  power  of  expansion 
that,  though  sometimes  checked,  has  never  been 
destroyed,  and  to  whose  advances  no  limits  can 
be  set ;  which  has  most  thoroughly  developed 
human  intelligence  and  given  the  largest  im- 
pulse to  these  arts  and  industries  that  con- 
tribute to  the  noblest  civilization  ;  I  hold  that 
such  a  system,  institution,  or  religion  has  vindi- 
cated its  right  to  hold  the  world  as  its  heritage, 
and  the  nations  as  its  possession.  More  than 
that,  I  claim  for  it  the  right  to  demand  that 
in  the  absence  of  any  other  adequate  explana- 
tion of  its  origin,  its  nature,  and  its  powers,  its 
own  account  shall  be  accepted.     Nor  is  more 

religion,  which  man  might  contrive  :  even  the  religion  which  God 
revealed.     But  the  word  is  accurate  enough  for  my  purpose. 


LECTURE  II.  41 

included  in  this  demand  than  a  truly  scientific 
method  must  necessarily  require.  Canons  of 
historical  criticism  can  no  more  rightly  be  a 
priori,  arbitrary  and  antecedent  to  the  facts  of 
history,  than  canons  of  good  writing  can  prop- 
erly be  a  priori,  arbitrary  and  antecedent  to 
good  models  in  composition.  All  true  canons 
of  criticism,  whether  historical  or  literary,  are 
— as  Pope^  said  long  ago  of  the  latter — "  dis- 
covered not  devised."  In  either  case  facts  pre- 
cede theories.  Theories,  indeed,  must  come 
out  from  facts  and  not  be  imported  into  them. 

Taking,  then,  the  testimony  of  almost  nine- 
teen centuries,  what  answer  do  we  obtain  to  the 
questions,  gathered  up  into  one,  that  we  have 
been  asking?  Where  do  we  find  the  system, 
religion,  institution,  which  has  met  the  condi- 
tions presented  to  us,  and  accomplished,  with 
whatever  drawbacks,  the  work  for  the  race 
for  which  all  previous  history  had  been  the 
unconscious  preparation  ? 

I  anticipate  your  answer  to  this  question  as 
you  anticipate  mine.  In  truth  there  is  but  one 
answer  that  can  be  given.  It  is  the  system  of 
Christianity,  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ,  the 

'^  Essay  on  Criticism. 


42  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

institution  known  as  the  Christian  Church,  that 
has  accomplished  this  ;  not  Confucius,  not  Bud- 
dha with  the  Sutras,  not  Mohammed  with  the 
Koran,  not  anything  that  has  been,  or  that 
is  in  the  world  has  accomplished  this,  except 
Jesus  Christ  and  His  Church.  Of  Christianity- 
only  can  that  be  said  which  Montesquieu  has 
said  of  it,^*^  "  The  religion  of  heaven  has  not  es- 
tablished itself  by  the  same  methods  as  the  re- 
ligions of  this  world.  Read  over  the  history  of 
the  Church  and  you  will  see  the  prodigies  of  the 
Christian  religion.  Has  it  resolved  to  enter  a 
country  ?  It  knows  how  to  open  the  gates  of 
that  country,  and  can  use  all  instruments  that 
present  themselves.  Sometimes  God  employs 
a  few  fishermen,  sometimes  an  emperor  on  his 
throne.  Does  the  Christian  religion,  conceal 
itself  in  subterranean  hiding-places  ?  Wait  a 
moment  and  you  will  hear  the  imperial  majesty 
speaking  in  its  behalf.  It  crosses  seas,  rivers, 
mountains  ;  there  are,  in  truth,  no  obstacles  that 
can  arrest  its  march.  Are  human  minds  re- 
pugnant to  it  ?  It  overcomes  that  repugnance. 
Are  customs,  usages,  edicts,  laws  opposed  to  it  ? 
It  will  triumph  over  natural  conditions,  over 

*'  Defence  de  F Esprit  des  Lois  ;  article  Tolerance  ;  vol.  iv.  p.  274, 
ed.  1772. 


LECTURE  IT.  43 

laws  and  legislators."  Strange  and  striking 
words  these  !  but  how  strictly  true  !  What  a 
picture  they  present  of  the  march  of  Christianity 
along  the  historic  pathway  of  the  world,  taking 
up  as  it  advances  all  the  factors  that  the  ages 
have  prepared  for  a  possible  future,  and  from 
them  and  with  them  enabling  men — by  its 
spirit,  in  its  power,  through  its  life — to  work 
out  all  that  is  best  and  noblest  in  that  civiliza- 
tion of  whose  triumphs,  on  every  side  and  in  all 
directions,  we  are  never  weary  of  making  our 
boast. 

Look  at  Paul  the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  as, 
under  his  appeal  to  Caesar,  he  comes  to  the  im- 
perial centre  of  the  world.  Mighty  in  the  He- 
brew Scriptures,  trained  in  Jewish  learning,  not 
untrained,  assuredly,  in  Greek  letters,  speaking 
the  universal  language — Greek,  crossing  the 
Mediterranean  in  a  Greek  ship  of  Alexandria, 
advancing,  after  he  reaches  the  shores  of  Italy, 
towards  the  capital  on  a  Roman  road,  coming 
to  be  tried  at  a  Roman  tribunal,  and  by  forms 
of  the  world-wide  Roman  law,  what  a  living 
prophecy,  so  to  speak,  he  is  of  the  progress  of 
the  Faith  and  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ.  Ex- 
cept the  mighty  events  of  our  Lord's  own  life, 
to  which  there  can  be  no  parallel  nor  approach. 


44  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

I  know  no  sublimer  spectacle  in  the  history  of 
the  world  than  is  exhibited  by  the  apostle  stand- 
ing, if  not  literally  still  very  really,  in  the 
presence  of  the  Emperor  of  Rome.  Both  are 
representative  men  as  well  as  individuals.  Each 
represents  a  system — and  the  systems  so  repre- 
sented are  alternative  possibilities  for  the  his- 
toric world.  The  one  centres  in  the  Roman 
Emperor,  the  other  centres  in  Jesus  Christ ; 
and  one  or  the  other  is  to  mould  the  world. 
Which  of  them  shall  it  be  ?  That  represented 
by  the  emperor  who  witnesses  to,  and  in  some 
sense  records,  the  failures  of  the  past ;  or  that 
represented  by  the  apostle  who  is  the  living 
prophecy  of  the  possibilities  of  the  future  ? 
History  has  answered  that  question,  and  we  all 
know  what  the  answer  is. 

To  attempt  to  follow  out  this  answer  in  all  its 
multitudinous  details,  multiplying  themselves 
through  eighteen  centuries,  would  be  a  simple 
impossibility.  It  would  involve  a  review  of  phi- 
losophy, science,  art,  literature,  the  great  in- 
dustries of  civilization,  and  many  other  things 
which  could  be  adequately  exhibited  only  in 
volumes  upon  volumes.  The  result,  however, 
of  such  a  survey  may  be  expressed  in  the  briefest 
of  brief  statements.     All  these  things  have  been 


LECTURE  II.  45 

most  fully  and  thoroughly  developed  in  Chris- 
tian countries  and  under  the  influences  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

If  there  are  any  things  on  which  our  present 
civilization  specially  values  itself,  these  are  its 
great  attainments  in  science  and  in  the  indus- 
trial arts.  We  hear  and  speak  of  these  attain- 
ments continually  ;  and  assuredly  they  deserve 
to  be  heard  about  and  spoken  of.  How  are 
we  to  explain  the  fact  that  they  are  exclusively 
the  possession  of  Christian  countries — so  exclu- 
sively, that  other  countries  have  them  to-day 
only  as  Christian  civilization  has  introduced 
them,  and  sometimes  (as  in  the  case  of  China) 
introduced  them  in  the  face  of  violent  oppo- 
sition ? 

The  fact  is  admitted  by  those  who  have  no 
wish  to  admit  it,  no  prejudice,  as  we  say,  in 
favor  of  Christianity.  Indeed,  it  is  too  patent 
to  be  denied.  In  1877,  at  a  reunion  of  natural- 
ists at  Cologne,  a  Berlin  savant  and  professor 
said  :  "  Paradoxical  as  the  utterance  may  seem, 
modern  science  owes  its  origin  to  Christianity." 
In  the  report  of  the  French  commission  on  the 
Exposition  of  1851,  we  find  a  manufacturer 
saying,  "  The  exposition  has  proved  to  all  the 
world  that  industry  really  exists  only  in  Chris- 


46  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

tian  couptries."^'''  He  means,  of  course,  the 
great  industries,  those  that  deal  with  the  won- 
ders of  mechanism  and  the  use  of  natural  agents. 
What  does  this  fact  mean,  and  what  is  meant 
by  citing  it  ?  Is  it  meant  that  Christianity  has 
directly  concerned  itself  with  that  knowledge  of 
nature,  its  laws  and  forces,  which  constitutes 
science,  or  with  the  application  of  that  knowl- 
edge which  results  in  the  great  industries  of  our 
time  ?  Assuredly  not ;  to  assert  that  would  be 
both  false  and  foolish.  No  !  but  that  the  intel- 
lectual movement  which  Christianity  rouses  up 
in  men,  just  how  we  need  not  ask,  has  taken 
on,  and  then  given  out,  the  impulse  which  has 
wrought  these  wonders.  The  writer  from  whom 
I  have  cited  the  testimonies  just  given,  has 
placed  this  matter  in  so  clear  a  light  that  I 
avail  myself,  with  a  single  change,  of  his  strik- 
ing words.  They  occur  at  the  close  of  a  bril- 
liant lecture  on  "Christ  the  Teacher."  "If  on 
going  out  of  this  hall  you  should  say  to  a  friend 
whom  you  chanced  to  meet,  'We  have  just 
learned  that  Jesus  Christ  invented  machines, 
telegraphs,  and  railways,'  you  would  provoke  a 
smile.     But  if  you  said,  '  We  have  had  pointed 

2'  Cited  by  Naville,  Le  Christ,  pp.  54,  238. 


LECTURE  II.  47 

out  to  us  the  influence  of  Christianity  on  human 
thought  and  its  movements,  out  of  which  have 
come  modern  science  and  the  industries  to 
which  science  gives  birth,'  then  the  smile,  if  it 
came,  could  be,  in  my  opinion,  only  the  smile 
of  ignorance  or  prejudice." 

We  may  take  another  instance  in  illustration 
of  our  general  position— the  influence  of  Chris- 
tianity on  language.  No  words  need  be  wasted 
in  proving  the  intimate  connection  between 
language  on  the  one  side  and  human  advance- 
ment or  retrogression  on  the  other.  As  man 
advances  in  civilization,  as  his  world  of  thought 
enlarges,  so  language  enlarges  and  grows  richer. 
"As  one  habit  of  civilization  after  another  is  let 
go,  the  words  which  those  habits  demanded  have 
dropped  as  well,  first  out  of  use  and  then  out 
of  memory,  and  thus  after  a  while  have  been 
wholly  lost." 

Let  us  dwell  for  a  few  moments  on  this  law 
under  which  language  becomes  more  fruitful 
and  more  full.  I  do  not  know  that  it,  and  its 
bearing  on  the  connection  of  Christianity  with 
language,  can  be  better  stated  than  in  the  words 
of  the  present  Archbishop  of  Dublin. 

The  "cause  which  more  than  any  other 
creates  the  necessity  for  additions  to  the  vocab- 


48  BEDELL   LECTURES. 

ulary  of  language,  and  evokes  the  words  which 
shall  supply  this  necessity  when  it  is  felt,  is 
beyond  a  question  this — namely,  that  in  the 
appointments  of  highest  Wisdom  there  are  cer- 
tain cardinal  epochs  in  the  world's  history  in 
which,  far  more  than  at  other  times,  new  moral 
and  spiritual  forces  begin  to  work,  and  to  stir 
society  to  its  central  depths.  When  it  is  thus 
with  a  people,  they  make  claims  upon  their  lan- 
guage which  were  never  made  upon  it  before. 
It  is  required  to  utter  truths,  to  express  ideas, 
which  were  strange  to  it  in  the  time  of  its  first 
moulding  and  shaping,  and  for  which,  therefore, 
terms  sufficient  will  naturally  not  be  found  in  it 
at  once — these  new  thoughts  and  feelings  being 
larger  and  deeper  than  any  with  which  hitherto 
the  speakers  of  that  tongue  had  been  familiar." 
"The  most  illustrious  example  of  this  where- 
of I  speak,  is,  of  course,  the  coming  in  of  Chris- 
tianity, or,  including  the  anterior  dispensation, 
of  revealed  religion  into  the  ancient  heathen 
world,  with  the  consequent  necessity  under 
which  the  great  novel  truths  that  were  then 
proclaimed  to  mankind  lay,  to  clothe  them- 
selves in  the  language  of  men,  and  first  in  the 
language  of  Greece  and  Rome ;  languages 
which  in  their  previous  form  might  have  suf- 


LECTURE  II.  49 

ficed,  and  did  suffice,  for  heathenism,  sensuous 
and  finite  as  it  was,  but  not  for  the  spiritual  and 
infinite  of  the  new  dispensation."  ~^ 

No  man,  indeed,  but  one  who  has  carefully 
investigated  the  subject  can  have  the  smallest 
idea  of  the  extent  to  which  Christianity  has  per- 
meated, vitalized,  and  enlarged  the  language  of 
civilized  nations  ;  so  that  if  you  could  eliminate 
from  them  its  influence  and  work,  you  would 
not  only  greatly  narrow  their  limits  and  abridge 
their  fullness,  but  you  would  almost  be  com- 
pelled to  learn  them  over  again  before  you 
could  use  them  intelligently.  And  then,  be- 
sides, what  a  mass  of  the  best  and  noblest  litera- 
ture must  be  utterly  disfigured  if  not  absolutely 
destroyed  !  This  would  be  an  invasion  of  bar- 
barism in  very  truth. 

Why,  the  very  language  in  which  unbelief 
voices  its  attacks  on  Christianity  is  language 
that  largely  owes  its  capacity  to  express  the 
ideas  that  unbelievers  seek  to  communicate,  to 
the  influence  of  Christianity  itself. 

It  is,  of  course,  easy  to  say  that  what  is  here 
asserted  amounts  to  no  more  than  the  declara- 
tion that  if  Christianity  had  not  existed  it  could 

2^  Trench,  Study  of  Words,  p.  138-9. 


50  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

not  have  been  assailed ;  a  declaration  which 
would  be  simply  a  stupid  truism.  But  the  fal- 
lacy of  such  a  reply  is  too  obvious  to  need  more 
than  the  merest  mention.  It  is  answered  as 
soon  as  it  is  stated,  and  by  its  very  statement. 

There  are,  however  higher  things  to  be  con- 
sidered in  civilization  as  vitalized  by  Christi- 
anity than  science,  industrial  arts,  language  or 
letters.  We  have  also  to  look  at  the  moral 
training  and  advancement  of  civilized  nations. 
Here  is,  after  all,  the  crucial  test.  With  this, 
we  may  well  press  upon  men's  thoughts  the  in- 
fluence of  Christianity  in  the  various  matters 
named,  and  in  others  like  them.  But  without 
this,  all  those  other  things  would  amount  to 
nothing,  and  would  not  be  worth  the  trouble  of 
considering.  Let  me  then  state  this  higher 
aspect  of  the  influence  of  Christianity  in  the 
shortest  and  most  comprehensive  form  :  "  The 
influence  of  Christianity  on  the  moral  education 
of  nations  is  the  great  fact  of  modern  times." 

Now  I  know  that  I  shall  be  met  here  with 
two  objections,  or  it  might,  perhaps,  be  better 
said  with  two  forms  of  the  same  objection. 
First  it  will  be  said,  Talk  as  you  will  of  the 
moral  education  of  the  nations  by  Christianity, 
any  man  can  see  that  it  has  not  wrought  its  pur- 


LECTURE  II.  51 

posed  work.  It  speaks  of  peace  and  liberty  and 
purity  and  mutual  rights  and  duties,  and  we  be- 
hold, on  every  side,  war  and  oppression  and 
impurity  and  manifold  wrongs  and  evils.  And 
then,  secondly,  we  shall  be  told — we  are  told — 
that  Christianity  has  not  only  failed  in  this  wise 
and  to  this  extent,  but  that  it  is  itself  the  source 
of  untold  horrors  that  stain  and  darken  the 
pages  of  the  world's  history.  Such  accusations 
as  these  burden,  in  our  day,  the  very  air. 

Now  underlying  the  answers  to  both  these 
objections  is  the  great  fact,  (conveniently  over- 
looked just  here,  however  loudly  it  may  be  as- 
serted on  other  occasions)  that  Christianity, 
from  the  first,  recognized  the  free  agency  of 
man  as  a  moral  being,  and  treated  him  as  pos- 
sessed of  such  free  agency.  On  that  basis,  and 
on  that  basis  only,  it  professed  to  do,  it  has 
done,  its  work. 

Taking  our  stand,  then,  at  this  point,  we 
may  reply  to  the  first  objection  :  "  Christianity 
has  never  acted,  or  professed  to  act,  as  a  revolu- 
tion, but  only  as  a  reform.  It  has  never  sought 
to  produce  unexpected,  instant  results,  but  it 
has  gradually  wrought  the  reform  of  minds  and 
sentiments,  and  by  the  reform  of  morals  and 
institutions  the  reform  of    the  world.      Such 


52  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

was  its  mission,  such  was  the  end  it  proposed, 
according  to  the  declaration,  "  My  Kingdom  is 
not  of  this  world ; "  that  is  to  say,  I  do  not  act 
directly  upon  men  in  bodies  as  a  civil  law-giver, 
I  reform  the  world  by  the  reform  of  individ- 
uals."^^ 

I  suppose  nothing  is  more  frequently  urged  as 
proving  the  failure  of  Christianity  in  the  moral 
training  of  the  civilized  nations  than  the  wars 
and  the  armaments  of  those  very  nations.  Now, 
admitting  that  "selfish  ambition,  rapacity,  tyr- 
anny, and  vanity"  are  largely  the  motives  that 
bring  about  wars,  and  that  "  the  condemna- 
tion of  the  one  side  is  the  justification  of  the 
other,"  that  is  to  say,  that  the  motives  condemn- 
ed on  the  one  side  justify  resistance  to  them  on 
the  other  ;  admitting  that  war  may,  sometimes, 
be  the  final  and  only  method  of  obtaining  jus- 
tice when  all  others  fail ;  ^°  admitting  that,  for 
these  reasons,  armaments  of  nations  are  not  to 
be  sweepingly  condemned,  nor  war  indiscrimi- 
nately branded  as  a  crime  ;  admitting  all  this,  it 
is,  assuredly,  true  that  Christianity  does  propose 
to  bring  about  peace  on  earth  and  good-will 
among,  as  well  as  to,  men. 

'5  Rossi,  Bibliothique  Universe  lie,  Dec.  1867. 
3"  Mozley,  University  Sermons,  Sermon  V. 


LECTURE  11.  53 

After  all,  it  will  be  said,  wars  have  not  ceased 
in  the  world.  No  !  but  have  they  not  become 
less  frequent?  Once  they  were  unceasing  in 
their  continuous  clang  and  clash  ;  so  unceasing 
that  it  was  thought — and  was — a  marvellous 
thing  when  Christian  influence  caused  the  Truce 
of  God^^  to  be  proclaimed,  under  which  the  din 
of  arms  was  hushed  from  the  evening  of 
Wednesday  to  the  morning  of  Monday  in  each 
vv^eek,  and  during  Lent  and  Advent.  Those  peri- 
ods of  rest  and  safety  to  the  people,  giving  them 
opportunity  to  turn  to  the  arts  of  peace,  were 
some  gain  surely.  And  there  has  been  more  gain 
since. "  Truces  of  God  are  the  rule  in  our  time 
rather  than  the  exception,  and  the  longer  they 
continue  the  more  old  enmities  are  buried  and 
forgotten.  If  some  one  had  prophesied  at 
Yorktown  in  September,  1 781,  that  when  the 
centennial  of  that  victory,  which  secured  their 
place  as  an  imperial  power  to  the  United  States, 
should  be  celebrated,  the  British  flag  would  be 
honorably  saluted,  with  the  consent  and  even 
acclamation  of  the  nation,  what  terms  of  con- 
tempt for  his  idiotic  assertion  would  have  been 
deemed  too  strono;  ?     Yet  so  it  was.    And  what 

^^  First  proclaimed,  probably,  in  1032  or  1034, 


54  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

brought  it  about  ?  Not  state-craft,  not  diplo- 
macy, not  human  policy  of  any  sort,  but  that 
drawing  of  heart  to  heart  which  obedience  to 
the  law  of  Christian  sympathy  had  wrought. 
Time  only  strengthens  such  a  bond  as  that ! 

Again,  it  will  be  said,  the  horrors  and  atroci- 
ties of  war  continue.  Yes  !  but  how  much  mit- 
igated by  Christian  influences.  When  the  Con- 
vention of  Geneva  recognized  the  neutrality  of 
ambulances,  and  protected  those  who,  marked 
with  the  cross  of  red,  ministered  to  the  wounded 
of  either  army,  a  great  step  was  taken  forward. 
Ministrations  to  the  battle-stricken  were  indeed 
no  new  thing.  Christian  hearts  had  often  be- 
fore impelled  men  and  women  to  undertake 
them.  But  recognition  and  protection  of  this 
sort  were  new  things ;  and  do  they  not,  must 
they  not,  point  on  to  a  still  better  and  brighter 
future  ?  ^^ 

As  to  the  second  objection,  that  Christianity 
is  itself  the  source  of  untold  and  horrible  evils, 
it  is  even  more  futile  than  the  first.  It  con- 
founds, and  that  often  for  the  basest  purposes, 
what  men,  acting  as  free  moral  agents,  have  done 
under  the  name  of  Christianity,  with  the  teach- 

'-  Naville,  Le  Christ,  p.  44. 


LECTURE  11.  55 

ings  and  influence  of  Christianity  itself.  And 
this  confusion  the  very  men  who  make  it  would 
scorn  and  scout  in  other  things.  Who  would 
hold  law  responsible  for  the  chicanery  of  petti- 
foggers, or  medicine  for  the  pretences  of  quacks, 
or  science  for  the  charlatanry  of  empirics  ?  In 
all  these  cases  men  easily  distinguish  between 
the  character  of  the  thing  itself  and  the  purposes 
and  acts  of  those  who  attempt  to  use  it  as  a 
cover  for  their  own  baseness  and  evil  doing. 
Let  the  same  obvious  distinction  be  made  here, 
let  the  same  method  of  treatment  be  applied, 
and  this  objection  vanishes  at  once.  The  re- 
proach then  falls  on  men  and  not  on  Christian- 

One  word  more  before  I  leave  this  topic.  It 
is  surely  a  noteworthy  fact  that  every  scheme 
which  contemplates  the  moral  advancement  of 
the  race  without  accepting  and  employing  the 
influences  and  laws  of  Christianity  does,  never- 
theless, adopt  as  its  necessary  basis,  those  very 
moral  rules  which  Christianity  alone  has  given 
it.  But  for  Christianity  and  its  teachings, 
there  would  be  nothing  on  which  those  who  are 
now  endeavoring  to  deny  to  Christianity  and 
its  institutions  any  share  in  the  moral  culture  of 
the  race,  could  take  their  stand.     They  owe  to 


5^  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

it  the  very  position  which  but  for  it  they  could 
by  no  possibility  assume. 

The  phenomenon  which  I  have  desired  to 
present  is  now,  I  think,  sufficiently  before  us  to 
bring  on  the  question  which  necessarily  and  at 
once  grows  out  of  it.  The  phenomenon  is,  first, 
that  gathering  up  of  what  were  the  preparations 
of  the  past,  when  the  Faith  and  the  Church  of 
Jesus  Christ  came  into  the  world,  and,  next, 
that  opening  out  of  what  was  then  the  future, 
some  of  the  manifold  results  of  which  we  have 
been  contemplating;  a  gathering  up  and  an  open- 
ing out  which  Christianity  alone  has  wrought. 
The  question  is,  how  is  this  phenomenon  to  be 
accounted  for,  and  what  is  its  explanation  ? 

Ridicule  of  human  proneness  to  superstition, 
ridicule  indeed  of  any  kind,  can  neither  destroy 
it  nor  explain  its  existence.  That  method  was 
tried  in  the  beginning  much  as  it  is  tried  to-day. 
"Some  mocked"  is  the  prophetic  statement 
which  follows  the  record  of  the  sermon  of  St. 
Paul  at  Athens.  In  excavating  the  site  of  the 
palace  of  the  Caesars,  at  Rome,  a  room  was 
found  once  occupied  by  the  body-guard  or 
the  pages  of  the  emperor.  On  its  wall  was 
roughly  sketched  the  figure  of  a  man  bearing 
an  ass's  head  and  fastened  to  a  cross  ;  while 


LECTURE  II.  57 

underneath  were  the  words  "  Alexamenes  wor- 
ships his  God."  No  doubt  the  ribald  soldier 
or  flippant  page  who  thus  vented  his  contempt 
and  scorn,  thought  he  had  given  the  exitiabilis 
superstitio — so  Rome's  great  historian  desig- 
nates Christianity — its  death-blow.  No  doubt 
applauding  comrades  gave  praise  to  his  achiev- 
ment.  To  us  it  comes  out  of  the  dust  and  rub- 
bish of  centuries,  so  far  as  its  author  is  con- 
cerned, simply  as  a  saddening  proof  of  human 
folly.  But  its  misrepresentation  of  our  Lord, 
the  blasphemy  of  its  caricature,  its  cheap  and 
coarse  attempt  at  wit  have  found  their  imitators 
in  every  age  ;  they  find  them  in  our  own.  The 
uttered  word  and  the  written  page  have,  indeed, 
taken  the  place  of  the  rude  sketch  and  legend, 
but  both  are  outcomes  of  the  same  weak  folly ; 
and  the  same  oblivion  that  came  to  one  inevi- 
tably awaits  the  other. 

The  denial  of  the  truths  of  history  cannot 
destroy  or  explain  the  phenomenon.  To  deny, 
as  the  French  writer  quoted  in  my  first  lecture 
did,  and  as  others  have  done  since,  that  such  a 
person  as  Jesus  Christ  ever  existed,  simply  puts 
him  who  makes  the  denial  outside  the  possibili- 
ties of  discussion.  No  student  of  science  would 
dream  of  attempting  to  discuss  the  solar  system, 


58  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

as  we  term  it,  with  one  who  began  his  part  of 
the  discussion  by  denying  the  existence  of  the 
central  sun.  In  this  case,  indeed,  it  would 
be  an  undoubted  scientific  fact  that  would  be 
denied,  and  in  the  other  an  attested  fact  of  his- 
tory. But  he  who  makes  the  one  denial  out- 
laws himself  from  the  domain  of  reasoning,  as 
much  as  he  who  makes  the  other. 

Do  we  gain  anything  in  the  way  of  explana- 
tion from  the  theory  which  first  declares  that  in 
Jesus  there  abode  the  loftiest  consciousness  of 
God  that  humanity  has  ever  known ;  which 
next  asserts  that  in  bringing  the  power  of  this 
consciousness  to  bear  on  man  our  Lord,  when 
other  means  had  failed,  had  recourse  to  false- 
hood, imposture,  and  the  arts  of  a  charlatan  ; 
which,  finally,  in  order  to  justify  such  crimes — 
for  crimes  they  are — argues  that  mankind  in 
order  to  be  led  must  be  deceived,  and  then 
concludes  that,  since  no  great  work  can  be 
otherwise  accomplished,  such  deceit  is  blame- 
less ?  Now  the  ribald  Roman  soldier  and  his 
later  imitators  might  very  well  adopt  this 
theory.  One  who  regarded  Christianity  as  an 
evil  thing  might  very  well  adopt  it.  But  one 
who  sees  in  Christianity  a  power  for  the  good, 
the  right,  the  true,  can  only  protest,  solemnly 


LECTURE  II.  59 

and  earnestly,  against  such  an  outrage,  not  only 
upon  God  and  upon  our  Lord,  but  upon  the 
conscience  of  man  and  humanity  itself.    A  pure 
stream  could  not  proceed  from  so  foul  a  source. 
Do  we  make  any  advance  towards  a  solution 
of  the  problem  by  saying  that  monotheism  was 
natural  to  the   Semitic  race,  especially  to  the 
Hebrews  ;  that  our  Lord  was  a  man  of  that  race, 
of  lofty  character,  reason,  and  conscience  ;  that 
the  reasonableness  of  his  doctrine  and  the  purity 
of  his  morals  attracted  a  crowd  of  followers  ;  that 
by  these  means  his  doctrine  spread  in  the  world  ; 
that,  in  time,  a  miraculous  legend  was  formed, 
such  as  is  often  formed  around  good  and  great 
men ;   that,  in  a  word,  Christianity  is  the  con- 
summate flower  of  the  "tree  of  religion,"  but 
is  after  all  only  the  result  of  natural,  aside  from 
any  supernatural,  causes? 

I  have  stated  this  theory,  the  latest,  I  believe, 
and  the  most  attractive  one,  of  the  naturalistic 
school,  almost  in  the  words  of  an  eloquent 
French  writer,  to  whom  I  have  already  been 
indebted,  and  I  will  also  give  you  the  sub- 
stance of  his  reply,  with  some  of  my  own  addi- 
tions. 

If  monotheism  was  so  natural  to  the  Hebrews 
how  was  it  that  they  were  so  perpetually  laps- 


6o  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

ing  into  polytheism  and  idolatry ;  and  that 
their  strong  tendencies  in  this  direction  were 
effectually  checked  only  by  the  stern  discipline 
of  the  Babylonian  captivity  ?  If  the  doctrine 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  satisfies  in  many  things 
the  reason,  does  it  not  also  confound  the  reason 
by  the  mysteries  for  which  it  demands  belief? 
If  it  consoles  the  heart  on  the  one  hand,  does  it 
not  also  lacerate  it  on  the  other,  in  demanding 
the  sacrifice  of  its  deepest  affections  in  the 
cause  of  duty  and  of  God?  If  it  calms  the 
conscience  by  its  promises  of  pardon,  does  it 
not  also  disturb  it  by  the  strictness  of  its  re- 
quirements ?  So  far,  then,  as  we  contemplate 
its  attractions  for  individual's  souls  we  find 
over  against  everyone  of  them  a  balancing,  if 
not  an  overbalancing,  obstacle. 

And  if  we  look  on  things  external  we  really 
see  scarce  anything  but  obstacles,  obstacles  that 
are,  apparently,  insurmountable  ;  the  hatred  of 
the  Jew,  the  scorn  of  the  Greek,  the  "superb 
contempt "  of  the  Roman  ;  on  every  side  perse- 
cution, prisons,  torture,  death  ;  nothing  to  fa- 
vor the  advancement  of  the  "  sect  everywhere 
spoken  against,"  everything  to  oppose  it.  And 
yet  we  behold  it  ever  spreading,  ever  overcom- 
ing difficulties,  ever  gathering  new  adherents, 


LECTURE  II.  6 1 

till  Tertullian  could  say,^  "  We  are  of  yester- 
day, and  yet  we  have  filled  your  cities,  islands, 
castles,  towns,  your  places  of  assembly,  your 
very  camps,  your  tribes,  your  decuriae,  the 
palace,  the  senate,  the  forum  ;  we  have  left  you 
only  your  temples ;"  till  the  last  confessedly 
heathen  emperor,  dying  on  the  plains  of  Persia, 
was  compelled  to  cry  with  his  latest  breath,  as 
he  flung  a  handful  of  his  own  blood  up  towards 
heaven,  "  Galilean,  Thou  hast  conquered  !  "  ^* 

Whether,  then,  we  consider  the  internal  or 
the  external  difficulties  of  the  naturalistic  solu- 
tion of  our  problem,  it  breaks  down  by  its  own 
weight.  Driven  thus  from  one  explanation  to 
another,  and  finding  none  to  meet  the  condi- 
tions of  the  phenomenon  we  have  in  mind,  and 
to  explain  them,  we  are  also  driven — if  I  may 
so  say — to  the  account  which  Christianity  gives 
of  itself,  namely,  that  it  is  God's  plan  for  the 
regeneration  of  the  race.  This  explains,  ade- 
quately and  fully,  how  it  lives  by  death,  con- 
quers by  what  seems  to  men's  eyes  failures, 
grows  by  repression,  is  strong  in  its  weakness, 


^  Apolog.  c.  xxxvii. 

^  Theodoret,  Eccl.  Hist.  Lib.  III.  c.  xxv.  One  cannot  but  think 
that  Julian's  words  meant  more  than  merely  a  reference  to  his  own 
death. 


62  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

rich  in  its  poverty,  glorious  in  its  humiliation ; 
because  it  is  the  power  of  God  and  the  wisdom 
of  God. 

Am  I  told  that  if  one  accepts  this  explana- 
tion he  also  accepts  the  idea  of  a  miraculous 
interposition  of  God  in  the  affairs  of  men,  and 
that  this  involves  too  severe  a  strain  on  faith  ? 
Then  I  reply,  that  any  other  explanation  in- 
volves a  vastly  greater  strain,  and  compels  me 
to  accept  a  vastly  greater  miracle  ;  for,  you  may 
rely  upon  it,  incredulity  is  the  most  credulous  of 
all  things. 

If  Christianity  has  won  its  way  and  done  its 
work  because  it  is  a  puerile  superstition  and  a 
fair  butt  for  ribald  wit ;  or  because  its  reputed 
Founder  never  lived  on  earth  ;  or  because  with 
lofty  purposes  and  aims  He  still  condescended 
to  arts  of  deceit  and  charlatancy,  thereby  out- 
raging both  God  and  man  ;  or  because  against 
every  attraction  which  it  presented  a  fully  bal- 
ancing obstacle  reared  itself,  against  every  out- 
ward favoring  circumstance  there  stood  an 
overbalancing  counter-circumstance  that  seemed 
to  be  an  insurmountable  hindrance  ;  if  I  am 
to  seek  in  these  things  the  explanation  of  the 
spread  and  the  work  of  Christianity  among 
men,  then,  indeed,  I  am  presented  with  a  mira- 


LECTURE  II.  63 

cle,  or  rather  a  mass  of  miracles,  that  well  may- 
stagger  me.  While  I  have  been  asserting  the 
impossibility  of  any  miracle,  I  have  been  creat- 
ing a  thousand  for  myself.  While  I  have  been* 
making  boast  of  my  philosophical  incredulity,  I 
have  fallen  into  the  pit  of  a  most  unphilosophi- 
cal  credulity.  And  my  only  escape  from  it  is 
to  accept  the  account  which  Christianity  gives 
of  itself,  its  origin,  its  Founder,  its  purposes  and 
its  powers.  In  that  light,  and  in  that  light  only, 
shall  we  see  light,  the  light  in  which  there  is  no 
darkness  at  all. 

As  I  draw  toward  the  end  of  the  line  of 
thought  along  which  we  have  been  moving,  I  am 
reminded  that  I  have  not  brought  out  those  loft- 
iest truths  wiih  which  we  find  ourselves  in  con- 
tact, nor  led  you  to  that  higher  level  on  which 
we  stand,  when  we  consider  the  living  power  of 
the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus  on  human  character  in 
its  individual  personality  ;  in  a  word,  the  life  of 
God  in  the  soul  of  man.  This  has  not  been  be- 
cause I  underestimate  the  surpassing  value  and 
reality  of  this  great  attestation  of  the  Faith. 
God  forbid  !  But,  only  because  my  purpose 
was  to  show,  if  I  might,  that  looking  solely  at 
what  the  Faith  and  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ 
had  accomplished  for  the  race  in  the  outwork- 


64  *        BEDELL  LECTURES. 

ings  of  its  ordinary  historical  development,  the 
truest  explanation — indeed,  the  only  one  that 
met  all  the  conditions  of  the  phenomenon  to  be 
explained — was  found  in  their  own  account  of 
their  original  power  as  being  from  God,  and  not 
of  man. 

But  that  the  higher  and  at  the  same  time  the 
deeper  thought  may  not  be  quite  omitted,  let  us 
place  ourselves  once  more  at  the  point  towards 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  aU  previous  history 
converges,  from  which  all  after  historic  life  and 
movement  diverge.  Doing  this,  we  find  our- 
selves standing,  as  the  Apostles  once  stood,  in 
"  the  coasts  of  Csesarea  Phihppi"  and  by  the  side 
of  Jesus.  We  know,  as  we  stand  there,  what 
they  did  not — the  story  of  the  future.  We  hear 
the  question,  "Whom  do  men  say  that  I,  the 
Son  of  man,  am?"  We  hear  the  Apostles' 
answer  as  to  the  men  of  that  day — but  we  hear 
more.  From  the  future,  of  which  they  knew 
nothing,  we  hear  .a  confused  sound  of  many 
voices  in  reply.  Some  say  a  deceiver  ;  others, 
the  ideal  man  ;  still  others,  one  who  was  the 
joint  production  of  climate,  race,  and  surround- 
ing conditions  and  circumstances ;  others  still, 
one  in  whom  the  divine  has  temporarily  rested 
in  the  progress  of  its  eternally  recurring  incar- 


LECTURE  II.  65 

nations.  Amid  all  the  perplexity  and  confusion 
another  question  reaches  us,  "Whom  say  ye 
that  I  am  ?"  And  as  we  look  back  through 
preceding  and  on  through  coming  ages,  what 
answer  can  we  give  but  the  one  that  Peter 
gave,  "  Thou  art  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  liv- 
ing God"  ? 

Surely  we  cannot  rest  there.  Surely  we  must 
ask,  you  and  I,  What  do  these  answers  promise 
77ie  ?  To  what  do  they  bring  me  ?  What  is 
built  upon  them,  what  comes  out  from  them, 
for  me  and  my  own  necessities  ?  Whatever  it 
is  and  whatever  it  means,  no  reply  can  be  any- 
thing to  me,  unless  it  is  individually  my  own, 
and  unless  it  means  something  for  me  as  an 
individual.  What  is  to  be  said,  then,  of  these 
several  replies  ? 

If  I  conclude  that  Jesus  was  a  deceiver, 
nothing  is  offered  me.  If  I  say  that  He  was 
an,  or  even  the,  ideal  man,  I  am  brought  in 
contact  with  an  example — possibly  with  a  school 
of  morals — but  with  nothing  more.  If  I  re- 
gard Him  as  one  developed  by  manifold  natural 
conditions,  or  one  in  whom  the  divine  tempo- 
rarily rested,  then  I  find  "  an  ideal  Christianity  ; 
a  religion  free,  individual,  without  dogma  or 
bond  of  union,  without  theology  or  church ;  a 


66  BEDELL  LECTURES. 

religion  eclectic  and  sentimental,  which  each 
man  builds  up  for  himself  according  to  his  own 
individual  notion  of  God,  admitting  under  that 
name,  so  vague  and  confused,  all  great  men  and 
moralists ;  so  building  for  the  future  a  Jerusa- 
lem which  De  Sacy  thus  describes  :  *  a  Jerusa- 
lem with  a  hundred  gates,  on  which  is  written 
beside  the  name  of  Moses  that  of  Mohammed, 
beside  the  name  of  Jesus  that  of  Buddha,  be- 
side the  names  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  those 
of  Rousseau  and  Voltaire  ;  a  Jerusalem  which 
bears  a  marvellous  likeness  to  the  tower  of 
Babel,  save  that  the  old  Babel  ended  ^\\\\  a 
confusion  of  tongues,  and  this  new  one  begins 
with  a  confusion  of  ideas.' "^ 

On  the  other  hand,  if  Jesus  be  the  Christ, 
the  Son  of  the  living  God,  then  there  is  offered 
me  the  sacrifice  of  the  cross,  the  power  of  the 
Resurrection,  the  life  of  the  Spirit ;  a  way,  a 
truth,  a  life,  which  meet  my  deepest  needs  and 
satisfy  my  highest  longings.  Then  I  find  that 
vision  of  peace,  that  city  of  God  over  against 
the  city  of  the  world,  that  New  Jerusalem 
which  does  not  spring  up  from  the  earth  to  go 
back  into  the  earth  again,  but  which  "  cometh 


*'  Caro,  LHd/e  de  Dieu  et  les  Nouveaux  Critiques,  po  130. 


LECTURE  II.  ^7 

down  from  heaven,"  and  takes  up  and  uses  for 
man  on  earth  what  man  has  failed  to  use  for 
himself ;  and  so  uses  what  it  thus  takes  up  as  to 
build,  not  merely  for  the  race  as  a  mass  but  for 
each  single  soul,  not  for  time  alone  but  also  for 
eternity,  "a.  city  that  hath  foundations."  This 
gathers  up  the  past,  this  opens  out  the  future, 
for  every  living  man. 

Built  on  the  living  Corner  Stone 

The  city  of  our  God  doth  rise, 
Bright  vision  of  celestial  peace, 

Whose  jewelled  turrets  pierce  the  skies; 
While  in  deep  ranks  on  every  side 

Angels  surround  the  Saviour's  Bride ! 
How  blest  the  mystic  bond  that  binds 

Thee,  dowered  with  glories  all  divine, 
Shining  in  marriage  gifts  of  grace, 

Queen  Mother  of  a  princely  line. 
To  Christ  thy  Lord  in  spousal  given, 

Gleaming  Jerusalem  of  heaven  ! 


1881. 
FOUNDER'S    DAY 

AT 

Kenyon  College. 


FOUNDER'S    DAY. 


ORDER  OF   SERVICE 

FOR 

ALL    SAINTS'    DA  Y. 

November  ist,  i88i. 


officia  ting  persons. 
The  Te  Deum. 

^  Right  Reverend  George  Wm.  Pe- 
Ante-Communion,       .     .     .      -j      terkin,  D.D.,  of  West  Virginia. 

<  Rev.  W.  C.  French,  D.D.,  Secre- 
The  Epistle, j      ^^^^y  ^f  Convention. 

j  Rev.  W.  B.  Bodine,  D.D.,  Presi- 
The  Gospel -j      jent  of  the  College. 

j  Rev.  Fleming  James,  D.D.,  Pas- 
Creed, j      ^qj.. 

(  Right  Reverend  Gregory  Thurston 
Founder's  Memorial,    .     .     j      Bedell,  D.D.,  of  Ohio. 

doxology. 

Prayer  for  Institutions. 

Hymn  183. 

(  Right  Reverend  John  Williams, 
The  Lecture -j      d.D.,  of  Connecticut. 

Hymn  176. 

Offertory  for  Founder's  Scholarship. 

Prayer  for  Church  Militant. 

Matriculation  of  the  Theological  Seminary. 

Matriculation  of  Kenyon  College. 

The  Holy  Communion,  administered  by  the  Bishops  present. 

Benediction,  by  the  Right  Reverend  the  Bishop  of  Connecticut. 


FOUNDER'S  DAY 
AT  KENYON  COLLEGE,   1881. 


We  remember  before  God  this  day  tlie  Founders 
of  these  Institutions:  Philander  Chase,  the  first 
Bishop  of  Ohio,  clarum  et  venerabile  no^nen,  whose 
foresight,  zeal,  unwearied  patience,  and  indomitable 
energy,  devised  these  foundations,  and  established 
them,  temporarily  at  Worthington,  but  permanently 
at  Gambler.  He  was  the  founder  of  the  Theologi- 
cal Seminary,  Kenyon  College,  and  of  the  Grammar 
School ;— Charles  Pettit  McIlvaine,  the  second 
Bishop  of  Ohio,  rightly  known  as  the  second  Founder 
of  these  Institutions,  whose  decision  of  character,  and 
self-devoted  labors,  saved  them  at  two  distinct  crises 
of  difficulty;  he  builded  Bexley  Hall  for  the  use  of 
the  Theological  Seminary,  Ascension  Hall  for  the  use 
of  Kenj^on  College,  Milnor  Hall  for  the  use  of  the 
Grammar  School,  and  he  completed  Rosse  Chapel  on 
the  foundations  laid  by  Bishop  Chase. 

We  remember  before  God  this  day  pious  and  gen- 
erous persons,  contributors,  whose  gifts  enabled  the 
Bishops  of  Ohio  to  lay  those  foundations,  and   who 


74        FOUNDER'S  DAY  AT  KEN  YON   COLLEGE. 

are  therefore  to  be  named  among  the  Founders.  We 
make  mention  only  of  those  who  have  departed  to  be 
with  Christ,  and  now  rest  in  Paradise. 

Among  the  many,  we  name  only  a  few  whose  gifts 
are  noticeable  because  of  the  influence  of  their  char- 
acter and  position: 

Henry  Clay,  whose  introduction  of  Bishop  Chase 
to  the  Admiral  Lord  Gambier,  of  England,  initiated 
the  movement  in  1823  ;  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury; the  Lord  Bishops  of  London,  Durham,  St.  Da- 
vids, Chester,  Lichfield ;  the  Deans  of  Canterbury 
and  Salisbury;  Lords  Kenyon,  Gambier,  Bexley,  Sir 
Thomas  Acland;  Reverend  Edward  Bickersteth,  Hen- 
ry Hoare,  Marriott,  Pratt,  William  Wilberforce, 
Thomas  Wiggin,  Thomas  Bates;  the  Dowager  Coun- 
tess OF  RossE,  who  aided  liberally  the  Chapel  which 
afterwards  bore  her  name;  Hannah  More,  who  also 
bequeathed  a  Scholarship  which  bears  her  name;  and 
five  hundred  and  thirty  others  whose  names  are  re- 
corded in  the  memorial  prepared  by  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Bronson  at  the  order  of  the  Trustees. 

We  remember  before  God  the  liberality  of  William 
Hogg,  from  whom  this  domain  was  purchased  under 
the  advice  of  Henry  B.  Curtis  and  Daniel  S.  Norton, 
with  the  consent  of  Henry  Clay;  the  grantor  contrib- 
uting one  fourth  of  its  market  value. 

In  1838,  John  Quincy  Adams,  the  President  of  the 


FOUNDER'S  DAY  AT  KEN  YON  COLLEGE.       75 

United  States;  Mrs.  Sigourney;  Arthur  Tappan,  who 
originated  the  Milnor  Professorship;  St.  George's 
Church,  New  York,  which  established  a  Scholarship; 
Rev.  Drs.  Milnor,  Tyng,  Bedell,  Sparrow,  Keith,  Rev. 
I.  Morse,  Dudley  Chase,  Albert  Barnes,  John  Trimble, 
William  Jay,  Abbott  and  Amos  Lawrence,  Peter  Stuy- 
vesant,  Richard  Varick,  and  nine  hundred  and  ninety 
others  whose  names  are  recorded. 

These  were  the  first  Founders  of  these  Institutions. 

Among  those  who  aided  Bishop  Mcllvaine  we  men- 
tion before  God  to-day, — in  1832,  Bishop  White,  Rev. 
Manton  Eastburn  and  the  Ascension  Church,  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Cutler  and  St.  Ann's  Church,  Brooklyn,  the  Rev. 
Drs.  Muhlenberg,  and  Wing,  Peter  A.  Jay,  James  Len- 
nox, Robert  Minturn,  Henry  Codman,  Robert  Carter, 
Matthew  Clarkson,  Charles  Hoyt,  J.  N.  Whiting,  and 
four  hundred  and  sixty  others  whose  names  are  re- 
corded. 

And  in  1835,  in  England,  Daniel  Wilson,  Bishop  of 
Calcutta;  the  Bishops  of  London,  Winchester,  Salis- 
bury, and  Lichfield;  the  Duchess  of  Kent,  the  Duch- 
ess of  Gloucester,  the  Princess  Augusta,  the  Duchess 
of  Beaufort,  the  Earl  of  Carnarvon,  Rev.  Thomas 
Hartwell  Home,  Charles  Brydges,  John  Fox,  Jerram, 
Jowett,  Baptist  Noel,  Dr.  Plumtre,  Charles  Simeon, 
Henry  Thornton,  Sir  Thomas  Baring,  Henry  Roberts, 
architect,  who  gave  the  plan  and  working  model  for 


•J^       FOUNDER'S  DAY  AT  KEN  YON  COLLEGE. 

Bexley  Hall;  with  four  hundred  and  eighty -three 
others  whose  names  are  recorded. 

These  are  the  second  Founders  of  these  Institu- 
tions. 

We  mention  before  God  to-day  the  gifts  of  Bishop 
Gadsden,  Bishop  Johns,  Colonel  Pendleton,  John  Kil- 
gour,  the  Kinneys,  Dr.  Doddridge,  Charles  D.  Betts, 
who  founded  a  fund  for  the  purchase  of  theological 
books;  Rev.  C.  C.  Pinkney,  who  contributed  for  fit- 
ting up  a  Laboratory;  J.  D.  Wolfe,  who  contributed  to 
found  the  Lorillard  and  Wolfe  Professorships;  John 
Johns,  M.D.,  of  Baltimore,  who  left  a  valuable  legacy 
to  the  Institutions;  Stewart  Brown,  William  H.  As- 
pinwall,  and  others  who  contributed  to  the  building 
of  Ascension  Hall;  Thomas  H.  Powers,  Lewis  S.  Ash- 
urst,  John  Bohlen  and  sister,  and  others  who  founded 
a  Professorship  in  memory  of  the  late  Dr.  Bedell  of 
Philadelphia ;  W.  W.  Corcoran,  President  Andrews, 
Rev.  Alfred  Blake,  and  nine  hundred  and  forty-four 
others  who  are  also  to  be  counted  among  the  founders 
of  these  Institutions. 

And  last,  the  Philanthropist,  the  intimate  friend  of 
Bishop  Mcllvaine,  who  in  token  of  that  friendship 
founded  a  Professorship,  that  now  bears  his  name, 
bears  the  name  of  George  Peabody. 

The  donors  to  these  Institutions  who  are  still  living 
(many  of  whom  have  gathered  on  this  day)  unite  with 


FOUNDER'S  DAY  AT  KEN  YON  COLLEGE.        'J 'J 

US  in  praising  God  for  the  privilege  of  building  upon 
foundations  which  were  thus  so  strongly  laid. 

Among  them  we  mention  with  gratitude, — of  Eng- 
land, William  E.  Gladstone,  Member  of  Parliament 
(at  present  Prime  Minister),  Rev.  Canon  Carus,  and 
J.  Pye  Smith; — of  the  United  States,  Rev.  Drs.  Dyer 
and  Burr,  Professor  Francis  Wharton,  A.  H.  Moss, 
M.  M.  Granger,  John  Gardiner,  Mrs.  Spencer,  Rev. 
Archibald  M.  Morrison,  who  founded  the  Griswold 
Professorship;  Peter  Neff,  Jr.,  who  gave  the  Tele- 
scope, and  Transit  Instrument;  Mrs.  Lewis,  who  part- 
ly founded  a  Professorship;  the  Rev.  Drs.  Muenscher, 
Bronson,  and  Brooke;  Rev.  Messrs.  Lounsbury  and 
E.  A.  Strong,  whose  efforts  brought  many  valuable 
contributions  to  these  Institutions;  and  several  hun- 
dred others  whose  names  are  recorded. 

The  third  Bishop  of  Ohio,  with  the  aid  of  William 
H.  and  John  Aspinwall,  James  M.  Brown,  Samuel  D. 
Babcock,  William  B.  Astor,  and  other  members  of  the 
Ascension  Church  of  New  York,  builded  the  Church 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  for  the  use  of  all  the  Institutions; 
through  him  Mrs.  Bowler  founded  the  Professorship 
which  bears  her  husband's  name,  R.  B.  Bowler,  who 
gave  a  philosophical  apparatus,  and  who  with  Larz 
Anderson,  Henry  Probasco,  William  Proctor,  and 
others,  founded  the  Mcllvaine  Professorship;  Jay 
Cooke    founded    the   Proiessorship   which  bears    his 


78       FOUNDER'S  DAY  AT  KEN  YON  COLLEGE 

father's  name;  Frank  E.  Richmond  founded  the 
Hoffman  Library  Fund;  Stewart  Brown  builded  the 
Tower  of  the  Church,  to  bear  the  name  of  his  son, 
Abbott  Brown.  By  the  same  Bishop  and  his  wife  the 
Organ  was  placed  in  the  Church  as  a  memorial  of  the 
second  Bishop  of  the  Diocese,  and  the  Episcopal  chair 
as  a  memorial  of  the  great  Founder;  R.  S.  French 
with  the  assistance  of  friends  provided  the  full  Chime 
of  nine  Bells  and  the  Clock,  and  by  the  aid  of  citizens 
of  Gambler  and  Mount  Vernon  placed  them  in  the 
Church- tower  with  power  to  ring  the  Canterbury 
Chimes;  members  of  the  Church  in  Philadelphia 
completed  the  endowment  of  the  Bedell  Professor- 
ship, among  them  chiefly  William  Welsh,  John  Bohlen 
and  his  sister,  and  Thomas  H.  Powers,  who  also  left 
a  Fund  in  the  hands  of  the  Vestry  of  Christ  Church, 
Germantown,  for  a  perpetual  supply  of  specified  books 
for  students  in  Bexley  Hall;  and  Robert  S.  Ives  and 
his  wife,  who  stated  that,  desiring  not  to  trammel  the 
Trustees,  they  placed  their  fund  in  the  Treasury  with- 
out conditions. 

In  1875  the  Trustees  determined  to  found  a  "Trus- 
tees' Professorship,"  which  is  partially  completed. 

All  these  and  seventy  others  are  also  to  be  counted 
among  the  Founders. 

We  mention  with  gratitude  the  successful  efforts  of 
the  present  President  of  Kenyon  College  to  complete 


FOUNDER'S  DAY  AT  KEN  YON  COLLEGE.       79 

the  endowments,  and  the  gifts  which  have  resulted 
therefrom;  namely,  from  R.  B.  Hayes,  President  of 
THE  United  States,  Peter  Hadyn,  Dr.  I.  T.  Hobbs, 
Rev.  William  Horton,  Thomas  McCulloch,  Samuel  L. 
Mather,  William  J.  Boardman,  A.  C.  Armstrong,  H.  P. 
Baldwin;  from  John  W.  Andrews  a  donation  in  lands 
for  the  founding  of  Scholarships  in  memory  of  his 
son;  from  Mrs.  Alfred  Blake  donations  for  the  pur- 
pose of  founding  a  Scholarship  to  bear  her  husband's 
name;  from  Columbus  Delano  the  Hall  which  bears 
his  name;  from  Mrs.  Ezra  Bliss  a  Gymnasium  which 
is  being  built;  and  from  Henry  B.  Curtis,  Scholar- 
ships which  from  generation  to  generation  will  foster 
sound  learning.  These  also  with  thirty  others,  the 
latest  givers  to  our  Institutions,  are  to  be  counted 
among  the  Founders. 

The  congregation  rising. 

For  all  these  generous  gifts  of  the  living,  and  for 
the  memory  of  the  dead  who  were  the  Founders  of 
these  Institutions,  we  give  hearty  thanks  to  God 
this  day;  ascribing  the  praise  of  their  benefactions 
to  His  almighty  grace,  and  the  glory  to  His  most 
holy  Name,  who  is  the  God  of  our  fathers  and  our 
God,  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  one 
ADORABLE  Trinity  for  evcr  and  ever.     Amen. 


Princeton   Theological   Seminary   Librarie 


190    1966 


1    1012   0 


;™(", '  p  *^''mB 

^^f^^Pi^- 

Date  Due 

mmmm> 

)3i^^^.i 

^^^M 

^F^^ 

^ 

PRINTED 

IN  U.  S.  A. 

^^GM; 


